Are You Working on the Right Things in Your Business?
By Nick Williams

Why growth isn't always about doing more

One of the sneakiest traps of running a growing business is that the more you learn, the more you want to do. A new marketing campaign. A new hire. A new system. Another piece of software that promises to make everything easier.

Before long, the to-do list has become the strategy. But I've learned that the problem isn't always a lack of good ideas. Sometimes the real challenge is knowing which idea deserves my attention right now.

That was one of the questions I wanted business owners to think about at CBG Live: what does your business actually need from you right now? Because trying to fix everything at once usually means nothing gets fixed properly.

The problem with having too much to do

Running a business takes an enormous amount of energy. It's not simply a job that fits neatly between nine and five. For most owners, it becomes an extension of who they are.

And the modern working environment makes that even harder.

Microsoft's 2025 Work Trend Index found that employees are interrupted by a meeting, email or chat roughly every two minutes during core working hours. For heavy users, that can mean as many as 275 interruptions a day.

Deloitte's 2026 research also found that more than half of chief strategy officers were dealing with too many priorities and too little time.

That creates a dangerous illusion of productivity.

I can spend an entire day answering emails, sitting in meetings, solving problems and moving between tasks, only to realise at the end of it that I haven't actually moved the business forward.

Being busy isn't the same as making progress.

More ideas don't mean more progress

Entrepreneurs are naturally good at spotting opportunities.

That's one of our strengths. But it can also become one of our biggest weaknesses when every opportunity becomes a priority.

The reality is that I have limited time, limited money, limited people and limited mental bandwidth. Every new initiative I introduce takes attention away from something else.

PwC's Strategy& found that 74% of executives felt their strategy asked them to work on too many priorities, while only 35% believed their strategy would lead their company to success. That tells me something important.

The problem isn't necessarily that we're choosing bad ideas. We're choosing too many. So instead of asking, "What could we do?"

I need to ask: "What does the business need us to do most?"

Start with five drivers

One of the exercises I use with business owners is to score the business from one to five across five key areas:

• Marketing & sales

• Operations & delivery

• Staffing

• Leadership

• Finance & scale

The point isn't to create another strategy document that gets filed away and forgotten.

It's about exposing the gaps.

Where are we strong? Where are we struggling? Where is the biggest opportunity? And, most importantly, where is the business currently being held back?

A low score isn't a failure. It's a clue. Because I don't need to fix everything at once. I need to fix the right thing at the right time.

What if marketing isn't the problem?

Let's say the sales pipeline is thriving. Leads are coming in. Deals are closing. Revenue is growing.

The obvious response might be to put even more money into marketing. But what if operations are already struggling to keep up?

More sales could simply create more pressure on an overstretched team. The problem isn't a lack of customers. It's the ability to deliver.

Or perhaps sales are healthy, but staff turnover is hurting the business. Maybe the team is strong and demand is high, but cash flow is preventing the next stage of growth.

The constraint can change. That's why a good growth plan isn't a wish list of 50 things I want to improve. It's a decision about where to place my biggest bet right now.

Find the constraint

The five-driver exercise gives me three simple questions:

Where are we weakest? What is currently holding us back? What would change if we fixed it? Those questions force me to focus.

Leadership capacity is finite. If I'm spending my time trying to improve ten different areas of the business, I'm probably not giving any of them enough attention to create meaningful change.

When capacity is tight, more activity isn't necessarily the answer. Better choices are.

Don't go home with 20 new priorities

Conferences, books, podcasts and courses are designed to give us ideas.

And ideas are exciting. After two days of learning, it's incredibly easy to go back to the office thinking:

We should fix this. We should launch that. We should change this. We should build that.

But when everything becomes urgent, nothing gets the attention it deserves.

That's why I always encourage owners to resist the temptation to implement everything they've just learned. The goal isn't to leave a conference with 20 new priorities.

It's to leave knowing which one matters most. Learning gives you options. Prioritisation gives you momentum.

So, what should you work on?

Start by asking five questions. Is marketing & sales the constraint?

Are we struggling to generate prospects, close deals or create predictable revenue?

Is operations & delivery the constraint? Are we winning work but struggling to deliver it efficiently or profitably? Is staffing the constraint?

Do we have the people, capacity and skills to handle the workload? Is leadership the constraint?

Are decisions getting stuck with the owner? Is responsibility unclear? Are we still too dependent on one person? Is finance & scale the constraint?

Do we have the profitability and financial visibility to support the next stage of growth? I don't need every area to be perfect. I need to identify the one that matters most right now.

The goal isn't balance. It's focus.

Businesses are constantly changing.

One month, sales might be the biggest problem. The next, it could be operations, staffing, cash flow or leadership.

I don't need every driver sitting at a perfect five. I need to know which one needs my attention today.

Microsoft's research found that 80% of the global workforce and leaders surveyed felt they lacked enough time or energy to get their work done, while around half of employees and more than half of leaders described their work as chaotic.

When time and energy are limited, spreading them across ten priorities isn't a strategy. It's a tax.

The bottom line

I don't need another massive list of things to do. I need to know what matters most.

The best business owners aren't necessarily the ones executing the most tactics. They're the ones who can step back, identify the current bottleneck and put their resources behind solving it.

So I come back to five questions:

Where are we strong?

Where are we struggling?

What is holding us back?

What single fix would make the biggest difference?

And what can wait?

Because growth isn't always about adding more. Sometimes the smartest thing I can do is take a breath, step back, look at the board and say: This is where our focus goes now.