Your baby is ugly, and you are doing everything wrong!

That was not what I said. And it is definitely not what I meant.

But that is how honest feedback can sometimes sound to a business owner or leader.

Question: How do you give feedback to an owner and/or leader’s direct question(s) about their business or operations?

Caution: The most efficient, concise, and clear answer is not likely the most effective answer to entice the asker to a richer and deeper mutual discovery discussion.

Let me give a personal example as a father of four children now married adults. I wish I learned sooner rather than later to ask curious open-ended questions. Often, my kids just wanted to think or process aloud. Advice offered too quickly was either incomplete at best or wrong at worst and did not invite them to safely share more and perhaps sensitive information.

I know that approach caused much angst for future discussions if my children were brave and gracious enough to give me another opportunity.

Back to business owners/leaders. They are typically successful (only 35% of businesses are still around after ten years)¹, have worked extremely hard, and invested many more hours than most. They are competitive and they want and know that their business needs to grow and adapt. But change is hard and getting valuable feedback is usually painful even when it is genuine and accurate.

What is the answer?

Curious open-ended questions with active listening for mutual clarity and increased understanding.

• Are we trying to solve a problem or develop an opportunity?
• Are we growing, shrinking, profitable?
• Do we know (read meaningful metrics) the status and trends of the business?
• Do we know where we want to go and how to get there?
• What are our customers telling us?
• What do we know about our competition? Do we care?
• Is there clarity and alignment of all the above throughout the organization?
• Do we have the capacity? The capabilities? The resources and/or right partners?
• What is keeping us up at night and why?
• What may be coming we are not even thinking about?

If you have the answers to all the above, then I want to talk to you! But if your customers, market, employees, and technology are changing, then I think I can assist you in optimizing your people, processes, and profits.

Your baby isn’t ugly. It is beautiful and you have clearly done a lot of things right.

1. https://www.commerceinstitute.com/business-failure-rate/

This blog was written without AI assistance other than MS Editor and a few edits from my amazing wife (https://www.linkedin.com/company/lea-marketing/). The image is AI generated.