Are you the bottleneck? I had an interesting conversation with someone recently about the ‘business bell curve’. We talked about how many businesses experience good consistent growth and then get to a point where things start to slow down and plateau. The conclusion we reached was that businesses are limited by the potential and skill set of the leader. i.e. your business will never be able to grow beyond your ability. So, to stay ahead of the game you need to either replace yourself or work relentlessly on your abilities so that you don’t become the bottleneck to your businesses potential.   Here are 4 things that I think amazing leaders do consistently to keep their business moving forward: Set clear goals. Having a compelling vision of where the business is going and articulating this clearly and regularly to your team is important for creating alignment. People need a sense of purpose to do their best work. Are you helping your team do their best work?   Surround themselves with the best people We all know that it’s not about doing everything in the business ourselves; instead it’s to find and keep the best people. The key here is that amazing leaders take the time to do this properly. From having clear business values, to developing a consistent culture all the way to personal development plans and 1-1’s. Do you focus time and energy on these factors daily or do you get hijacked by the day to day issues?   Review and reflect The pace of business is faster than ever and it sometimes feels like one week melts into the next. Taking quality thinking time out on a regular basis is really important to understand what’s working, what’s not working and what needs to change.  Great leaders do this both personally and with their teams on a regular basis. Are you taking enough time out to review and reflect?   Know the numbers Knowing the numbers leads to better decision making and therefore better results. Further to this, understanding the critical activities that drive those numbers and ensuring that someone owns each activity leads to amazing results over time. Does everyone in your business have a key metric that they are responsible for?   None of this is particularly complex. As with most things in life it’s all about doing the basics really well. Which areas do you need to focus on?