Fun in the workplace comes in many flavors and obviously what I consider fun won’t necessarily be the exact fit for you or your workplace but my examples and suggestions here can easily serve as ideas for building your own fun work environment.  Not surprisingly, most elements of fun in the workplace require some imagination and fortunately, imagination and fun both lead to more innovation and ideas sharing among co-workers.  This is one of the many great impacts fun has on an organization as well, especially in one where design, innovation and new ideas are an important part of the company’s success.  It certainly is in mine and so fun brings even more than its most obvious personal benefits by also encouraging the visual and imaginative mind to do more than what is required for day to day tasks.

Elements of Fun

Personal enjoyment

Everyone wishes their jobs to be something they enjoy and fun adds an element that creates that feeling of enjoyment.  If the workplace is fun, you will ultimately like your work more and put more effort into it and be happier with the job. A good job helps make a person happy and can add a lot of fulfillment and personal enjoyment to a person’s life.

Sparks creativity and imagination

Fun in the workplace can come in many forms and many of those, such as humor, games, jokes, competitions, interesting challenges or systems with prizes require new ways of thinking, wit or cleverness, teamwork or challenge and other activities that trigger new ideas, thinking and creative work. Many people simply consider anything creative to be fun (I’m one of those people) so tasks that involve these elements are often close associated or even sparking new creativity, innovation and imagination among those involved.

Can be a strong change proponent

So fun will trigger people to think about have more fun, often improving systems and processes or tasks along the way to make them both effective and fun in the process. This creativity is a wonderful partner to fun when it triggers ideas and rally’s support for change.  Change is scary to many people and so making change part of something that is enjoyable takes the fear out of it and it helps to support the change instead of add fear to it.  The ideas that come from fun programs then often encourage or reinforce even more change and it can continue to feed on itself if the systems are dynamic enough to let fun steer some of the work tasks and processes.

Engages teams and cross functional teams more easily

Most things that are fun in the workplace will only be successful if they are done with multiple people and when people have a chance to work together or compete with one another doing it.  Many of the systems and programs I’ve seen that are fun are when multiple departments or teams come together.  This can be anything from team building exercizes or job sharing to competitions or social events.  Activities that bring people together from multiple areas that do not generally work together are more social, and even if the activities are entirely work focused, the new social aspect is fun, and engages people more than without these activities in place.  And its this engagement between teams then that really starts to benefit the organization as the company works more and more integrated among its people instead of in silos or separate areas.

Builds personal relationships faster for more effective teamwork

The engagement between teams just above obviously happens within teams as well and the advantage of this is that personal relationships are build faster among teams when they are having more fun in their work.  People interact more and communicate much more frequently during fun activities and ultimately, when they know each other better.  People with closer relationships understand one another well and can be much more effective as a team than people who do not know each other well.  This is the case in all areas of life and it works well in the workplace as well.  Fun in the workplace is simply an element that can encourage this to happy and provide the environment needed to allow effective teamwork.

Increases employee loyalty and lengthens employee service time

People who are happy doing something tend to do more of it or to do it longer and so this is certainly true when it comes to work.  If you like your job and work because you have a lot of fun doing it, you are more likely to stay. People who are more likely to stay, will provide more value to an organization through gained expertise, strong relationships and teamwork with colleagues and by reducing overall training time and learn curve ratios compared to their delivered results.  All can be had by using fun in the workplace to keep wanting to stay!

Examples of Fun in the Workplace

These are just some of the things I have experienced in my work environments or know of that help to promote a fun work environment:

• Encouraging and allowing people to personalize their workspace with personal items, signs, posters, favorite team jerseys, flags, objects, gadjets or any other simply items.
• Keeping formalities out of day to day business and making daily communication informal, interesting and lively.
• Ensuring that staff meetings and group meetings are upbeat, lively and exciting.  Leaders must bring energy and enthusiasm to their teams and make it obvious and visible.
• Diverse personality types is advantageous for many reasons, but especially for adding fun, since you get more variety in the type of people working together when you have a mix of personality or behavior types.
• Managers and leaders must allow and promote fun themselves so that all employees know it is not only allowed, but encouraged.
• Jokes and humorous stories should be regularly available by postings, newsletters, and in scheduled meetings.
• Create and support an active social club to organize events, games and sports for all to participate in outside of work.
• Have the social club coordinate monthly social lunches and BBQs.
• Encourage simple, harmless practical jokes around the office
• Use team names and nick names for people based on their work or areas of expertise
• Play on people’s reputation with words, encouragement and tactful teasing
• Ensure high amounts of teamwork without individuals becoming too self situated in their roles
• Rotate job functions within teams to experience varying styles and personalities in repetitive tasks

Risks with Fun in the Workplace

There are of course some risks with adding more fun in the workplace and while they should not be ignored, they can easily be mitigated and controlled.  The most easily occurring risk could be that jokes and practical jokes get out of hand or unprofessional.  It is very important to know that any humor must be clean and clean from any prejudice, racism or sexism.  If this is monitored and correctly quickly when it is visible at any level, the humor can be kept professional and fun without the risk of hurting feelings or attacking anyone’s character.

Another obvious risk is that fun can be a distraction to actually getting work done and it can sometimes seem like a waste of time where pressing deadlines and tight schedules just don’t allow any time for fun.  I’d definitely argue against this thought process since I’ve seen how much more productive people are (including myself) at times of stress when there is some fun still to be had in the workplace.  The ratio of time to let the workplace be more fun instead of stagnant, is well worth the small number of hours lost considering the increased productivity, loyalty and imagination that the fun aspects of work bring out in people.  The benefits easily outweigh the risks and with attention and clear expectations about fun and time spent having fun in the workplace, it can properly be managed and encouraged to make all employees enjoy their work a little bit more!

Run From Gossip

This tip is unfortunately well known but rarely practiced.  It’s about gossip in the workplace, the dangers of it and why you should run away from gossip whenever you detect it. I’ve written an article called, How to Free Yourself From Gossip which is a great article to refer to if you need help on implementing this tip which is basically to avoid gossip and run away from it whenever you can in the workplace.  Gossip destroys relationships, it creates unhealthy conflict, bitterness and even resentment.  There is no value in it and usually it is much more destructive than people ever know.  If you want to make your working life easier and keep more friends, you can do this by staying out of gossip and not participating in it and even staying away from it altogether.

The most important steps for this career tip and to know when to run from gossip are outlined here. First learn to recognize gossip.  Listen specifically for it and use the basic rule that you should never be talking about someone else without them attending unless it is a discussion about how to help them.  Most other conversations about a person not listening is gossip, this the easier way to recognize it.  Second, excuse yourself from any gossip by simply saying, “I’m sorry, I don’t want to talk about John unless he is here as well, so please excuse me.”  Finally, learn what people tend to gossip, when they do and simply stay away from it, excuse yourself consistently from gossip and keep your distance from it as often as you can.

Running away from gossip is a smart thing to do in your career and an important skill to learn.

Career progress and performance is an important area in life and through my experience in striving to improve my performance I’ve learned to find many ways to perform well in my career.  It’s not been without its share of hard work though!  And as a manager, I also have insight and perspective from the other side of expectations and performance improvements and so these career tips come from that mix of experience and from my own study and practice in my career.  Please comment below if you have related experience or any experience/stories where you have used this tip!

Keep Your Resume Up to Date

Weather you are in a position since last week or last century, there is great value in keeping your resume up to date for your career.  You never know what can happen and especially in recent times of the economy, things can change quickly and it a possibility for pretty much anyone to suddenly find themselves needing a resume for a job hunt.  That said, you should keep your resume up to date BEFORE you need it and you will save yourself much pain and frustration from occurring at the same time as other struggles if you are hunting for a new job  This is especially true if you have been in a role for a year or more as there should be a number of accomplishments that you think about including for your resume.  Make them specific about what results you obtained whenever possible instead of the resume’s that simply list mundane tasks and impress no one.  Put some effort into updating your resume every few months or at least twice yearly to ensure you have recent accomplishments and responsibilities outlined and so that those items are passed by forgotten.

Another great reason for updating your resume as it can give you a significant advantage for review presentations or performance reviews.  Often you need to include comments or your accomplishments and major activities.  If you already have this on your resume from updating it regularly, this review will be a piece of cake.  Having details on hand can even help you to address things forgotten by your manager or extra points to highlight which can drastically help to influence your ratings and review issued.

Depending on your level of role and network you engage with, you may also find that you are often contacted by recruiters for positions or offers.  Having your resume on hand and up to date might be the difference from them pursuing you and going to the next guy.  Anyone who keeps their resume up to date is more professional and serious about their career (recruiters and hiring managers know this already) so its very helpful to ensure it is recent and ready to send out at any time when needed.  How long has it been since you updated your resume?

There are a number of rules and laws that are often used to describe leadership, such as Steven Covey’s laws of leadership and specifically the law of reciprocity. This one happens to show up in leadership to me because leadership is so heavily dependent on building great relationships.  I believe any leader has to be able to form strong relationships to lead and so I’ve put a spin on this law to look at it more specifically with the joy of reciprocity in relationships.  The dictionary definition of reciprocity is:

A mutual or cooperative interchange of favors or privileges, especially the exchange of rights or privileges of trade.

That exchange of favors that seems so natural with benefits for both parties is also, unfortunately, what gets in people’s way before reciprocity ever occurs. People get caught up in looking for the immediate benefit to themselves in many situations and don’t initiate that generous first step of offering their own help or service first. They also often expect a favor in return or feel that they owe someone who has done good to them. This selfish thinking or score keeping often stops a good deed from being done in the first place, which over time limits the good deeds returned. Its a cascade effect and emphasizes cynical thinking and just reinforces the selfish attitude and solitude for an individual.

The law of reciprocity is NOT a law that can be measured in any instance of time or even between the same parties involved for the give and take. It works across ones whole life and so the payback or benefit can’t be recognized by looking at any scorecard with an individual or even in a specific relationship. Its a balance beyond any single measure, any single relationship and even beyond the time you serve here on earth (Romans 2:6 – He will reward each one according to his works)

Instead, what needs to occur is simple generosity. Be willing to offer help, give that time, pay for lunch, make that apology first, share some vulnerable personal story, step out of your comfort zone, make a step in faith, be brave, be first and be generous. Do this without keeping score, offer it every chance you get. Put the effort into your relationships without expectation! Everything about doing this changes your attitude, increases your outlook and joy in life and is eventually paid back, if not immediately, later in life and even in eternity. Every personal connection you develop is another opportunity in your life, both with business colleagues, friendships and family. A generous mind will graciously give AND accept offerings of help, money, service and advice. And these will come to you more naturally, and at the time of need for yourself or others.  So, put everything you can into your relationships and experience the joy of that on its own and eventually the joy of the reciprocity that will occur if you simply put in everything you can and let the law of reciprocity occur!

Building on Others’ Ideas

Ideas are an important aspect of change and change is what drives any organization closer and closer towards excellence.  If ideas are not used to feed the company’s progress, then growth will typically halt.  However, ideas need to be shared in a way that reinforces that ideas culture, not destroys it.  Ideas are often very personal and the reaction to an idea can easily have a lasting impact that influences future behavior quite strongly.

When an idea is presented some people criticize that idea and others ignore it and come up with another idea or change it. Saying something as simple as, “Here’s a better idea, blah blah blah” is very common but in actuality, it is harsh criticism about the original idea and a way to claim the new idea selfishly.  It is subtle but very destructive.  This tip is to change your working and approach when it comes to ideas and that is to always build on others’ ideas instead of criticizing or replacing them.  Changing your response to, “That is a great idea AND we could add this or do that also” is an easy way to build on others’ ideas.  Supporting people’s ideas instead of judging them is important to promote cooperation and collaboration to work together instead of against each other.

Replacing ideas or criticizing them builds competition and quickly has people learning that when they share their ideas, they are criticized, which leads quickly to people NOT sharing their ideas anymore.  This is the last thing you want for any organization and its especially not something you want for your own reputation either.  So, support others and their ideas and build on them, adding value and leaving them the credit instead of looking to take it or replace their idea with your own.

Do Work Your Boss Does

This tip is really key when it comes to demonstrating that you are interested, willing and able to advance your position.  It’s to do some of the work your boss does, especially the work that is not necessary your responsibility, yet!  When you are able to show your ability to do work that your boss does it shows you boss and their peers that you are capable of being promoted.  There are a number of ways to go about this and many are straightforward and obvious, while others may be long term learning areas, either way they are worth seeking out and demonstrating that you can work at their level or on tasks that they are currently responsible for.

There are many areas to do this and finding out about your boss’ role is the first step.  Hopefully, they are a good boss and meeting with you regularly in a one on one where you have a chance to ask them questions about their own role.  If not, you can request to have a meeting from time to time with them asking specifically about their role and tasks that you may be able to help them do or practice doing yourself with their help or for their feedback.  If you don’t have an option or are uncomfortable asking them directly, you may be able to find out from HR, your boss’ peers or simply by observing their work and learning to understand their tasks on your own.

No matter how you find out, pick some thing that they do that appear like something you could do yourself and just ensure it is not sensitive work like anything involving knowledge or information that you should not yet have.  You don’t want to pry for information that you are not supposed to have.  Once you have the task, start practicing it with or without your boss’ authority and when you are ready to present your results or take it to the next level, its important to ask them for feedback on how well you did and always make sure you are prepared to still let them control that task or stay informed even if they have an option now to rely on you for it.  Offer to do it for them whenever possible and ensure you give them the results and the credit.  This is important!  Doing the work of your boss is best when they want you to do it and it helps them, this will be seem very positively and will almost always impress your boss and open up more options to learn more and take on new responsibilities.  In the long run, this can put you in the running for promotion much sooner than waiting for it and it lets you steer your career progression instead of sitting back and waiting for it to happen.

Finding the work that your boss does and learning to do it will let you work more WITH your boss instead of simply, for them!

Fill the Gaps

This tip is really about one specific thing that if you look at doing consistently and doing everything you can in this area, you will be more successful in your career, hopefully in the short term and definitely in the long term.  The tip is to regularly seek out any noticeable gaps anywhere you can in your workplace.  These can include any number of things in numerous areas:

• Your own performance
• New simple roles that no one is responsible for
• Tasks that need an owner or completion that is long outstanding
• Addressing or raising an obvious but unsaid concern
• Helping someone who obviously could use it
• Offer written suggestions that could solve organizational challenges
• Volunteer to take something new one when the opportunity arises
• Ask people about what went well and what went wrong to know what needs addressing and repeating

Doing these things comes at some expense and if you are wise, you will identify the low priority things in your work or tasks to ensure you make the time to fill the gaps you come across.  Eliminating wasteful activities, extra work, repetitive work, non-important work, and by prioritizing your focus, you will ensure you have capacity to fill the gaps and make a difference in those areas.  It’s in these areas that you can excel in your career and make the difference in your results, your inspiration and hopefully, even in building your own internal motivation.  So, don’t sit back and let your career progress without putting in effort to find and fill the gaps.

Build your Connections

Building your connections means that you make extra effort to meet people, get to know them and to build a relationship with them beyond just the connection itself.  Unfortunately this is often a lot harder than it seems.  The world of blogging and social media (for those of you that are familiar) seem like this is easy to do with friends, followers and every other type of connection and RSS feeds that are out there.  This is where it SEEMS easy.  These types of connections are very shallow and not really all that helpful for either party involved.  What is needed is more effort to build the connection into a real relationship.  This can definitely be done in these social media systems but it takes more effort than secretly following someone to have a valuable connection with them.

Build connections by communicating both ways, learning about each other and by offering your.  Provide value to them and ensure that value is at a personal level. In the face to face business world this requires real relationships to develop and some interest on both parties to stay involved.

Another important thing with building connections is to no limit the connections you do build and develop.  In the world of work a network of connections can easily lead or branch out in ways you would never of expected.  A friend of your caretaker, the uncle of a hairstylist, an old school roommate’s new girlfriend, any of these people could add a value connection to your network which is exactly why you should never limit who you develop connections with.  In fact, it is important that you purposefully diversify your business connections and make an effort to branch outside your direct work circles because of these amazing opportunities that do come about via people you would least expect it to.
Give First Without Expectations
The easiest way for you to ensure others want to stay in touch and connected with you is to offer to help them or provide value to them if they should ever need it.  If you give first to the relationship more often than not you will end up having the same in return.  You can’t expect anything in return though because if you want to true give value to others, you ought to do it so they get more out of the relationship than you do.  At least they need to feel that way and be offered a chance for that.  If you do this and give first to a relationship it is quite likely you can build a strong connection with that person and that connection will last.

Keep Track of Your Connections

Building a few connections is easy without any system or methods for tracking.  However, you should be growing your known connections every month and so you will quickly find yourself needing to keep track of connections.  There are many options here and tools available for tracking.  You can use just an address book (paper or electronic) as long as it can add notes to each entry.  You might also want to combine your address book with a calendar to help schedule some and remind you of certain connections.  A customer relationship management (CRM) software is another excellent way to track your connections.

I find that one of the most important things with tracking connections is knowing when your last contact was and if there were any special discussions or actions that came about since or as a result of that last contact.  A regularly scheduled phone message or quick note on email is a simple task that is easy to schedule in any calendar or CRM software.

Ideally, you then continue to contact people that you haven’t frequently contact and just let them know you were thinking about them and wanted to stay in touch and that they are welcome to ask or contact you if they need anything from you.  Obviously you will not be able to fulfill any request but its the offer that counts the most.  It’s that offer that carries a lot of weight in the relationship with a business connection.

Rely on your Connections

If and only if you have had your connections for some time and that you have given first your offer of help to them, will you ever be able to rely on your connections.  Relationships need to work both ways and if you’ve made an effort to develop them, then you can much more easily rely on them.  Ask your connections for help if you need it. Get them to help you find a new position or to offer assistance or advice in a role you are struggling in.  Whatever the need is, if you’ve built your connections and put some time in yourself first, then you can always rely on them in your own time of need.  It’s an amazing feeling to know you have business connections who support you and help you out when the time arises.

Additional Tips

Obviously, there are some tips mentioned already about how to best build your business connections, here are those summarized with a few additional ideas.  I’d love to see any comments of additional tips to build your connections at a deeper level than your friend count in Facebook.  Please share your thoughts on this as well!

• Schedule time for weekly contact to your connects
• Use the phone or face to face whenever possible over electronic messaging, its more personal
• Offer yourself for help or advice when the chance arises with your connections
• Make at least one new connection per week
• Follow up with EVERY connection you have at least every 6 months, some more frequently
• Keep a diverse set of connections, it will expand the opportunities available

Don’t Wait Until You Need a Resume

Whether you have been working at the same company for 10 years or have changed jobs every 6 months or are out of work, the best thing you can do to keep more career options open is to develop a great resume.  A resume is the tool that gets you an interview and it’s that all so important first impression of you.  Many people make the mistake of thinking that the resume is not that important and that it’s the interview that really matters, while that may be true for getting an offer, it isn’t true for getting that first call for an interview in the first place and so if you don’t get called, it will never do you any good.  The resume and cover letter are the first step, the interview the second and the negotiation is the third.  Each are all important and should be handled separately and carefully with any job search.

So don’t wait until you need a resume before you ever put any time into it.  Your resume is one of several of your career tools and it needs to be maintained to get the most out of it.  At any point in your career, you could come across a surprising layoff or cutback or a new job opportunity even if you are happy where you are.  It’s best to be prepared for that and have a ready and waiting resume that is up to date.  Put some time in a few times a year to review your accomplishments and update the content you have on your resume.  This is especially important if you have been with the same company for some time.  Updating your resume frequently will help you to capture your best accomplishments as your position at that company has progressed and it is a lot easy to think back over the last few months than it is over the last few years.

Resume Content

You should always have a resume to use as reference with all of you accomplishments and jobs over your entire career.  You use this as a reference since it will contain much more than you ever should deliver to a hiring company.  Keep a reference copy for yourself with all the detail you could ever need and then when you deliver a resume for a particular job, you have content you can pick and choose from that is most applicable to that job you are seeking.  The resume you actually deliver should always be tailored for the job, with relevant accomplishments and positions listed and nothing more.  As a hiring manager who has reviewed literally hundreds (maybe thousands) of resume’s I’ve seen that far too many people include a generic resume with all of their experience and no attention or focus on the most relevant points and experience.

Keep your resume short (1 page or 2 at the most) with specific points under each experience time frame that demonstrates the qualities expected for the role you are seeking.  Your points should always be based on the results you got and the accomplishments you had in doing the related tasks, don’t waste any space listing what the responsibilities were.  An interviewer or hiring manager is much happier learning about your responsibilities by seeing what you accomplished with those responsibilities.  Those accomplishments should be the areas you can talk about in the interview as well and will ensure you stand out from the competition.

Don’t put character traits or a description of yourself on your resume.  If you can’t prove it from the results and accomplishments you list, it won’t be believed anyway.  Saying that you are a hard working dedicated employee who loves to excel in their work and deliver results towards the goals of the organization is completely useless on a resume. Let your experience, references and interview demonstrate that for you.

Customizing a Resume for a Job

An objective is a great item to include on your resume, but ONLY if it is specific to the job being sought.  Trust me, nothing kills a candidates chances more than a vague objective proving they don’t know what they want.  Either make your objective specific to each job that you apply at or don’t include one.  A specific objective shows confidence and demonstrates the candidate is looking for the right job, not just any job they can get, which is very important if you want to stand out from the competition.

Next, your work experience and detail or summary points within each should be selected carefully for each job.  As mentioned above you should make your points about accomplishments and results in each role you’ve had and then pick those according to the role you are applying for. Ideally, your reference resume after you’ve spent time building it up with 10-20 accomplishments and results will leave you with a great set of items to choose from.  If you are applying for a technical role, pick the technical points that most demonstrate your abilities to succeed in that area.  If it’s for a leadership position then pick the points that show accomplishments where you have influenced a team or helped others to perform well in your previous work.  Select only 4 or 5 of your most appropriate points for each position.  You can leave an impression that that covers only a small amount of your accomplishments (which should be true anyway) by titling your experience areas according to the job as well.

For example, if you are applying for a technical writer position, then label your experience section of your resume as “Technical Writing Experience” and labels your points or details as a summary of your accomplishments.  This leaves you with more to share if you are selected for an interview.

Additional Thoughts

Keep in mind most resumes are only looked at for a minute or less and so you don’t want anyone reading or even glancing over things that are not relevant and that is why you should only include the best examples and experience you have. If they like what they read, you’ve done your job and this will make you much more likely to get an interview.

Time For A Change

Exhaustion is by far the most difficult stage to accept from an entrepreneur perspective. Exhaustion happens when your market is so crowded that you can barely keep your profit and clients, when your employees can switch instantly from you to your competition (and vice versa), and when the market share is calculated in fraction of percents.

Exhaustion is usually the natural consequence of leadership. Every process in the world is a cyclic one and business can’t be an exception. After a high rise, a lower altitude will follow, after a huge inspiration, expiration will follow. These are metaphors for a rather harsh reality: during this stage your efforts will seem huge and your reward almost inexistent. It’s extremely difficult to accept exhaustion especially after the leadership stage when everything seemed to happen effortless.

From an entrepreneur standpoint, the exhaustion stage is much a like an old, small shirt. It simply doesn’t look good on you. You grew up and your shirt isn’t fitting anymore. Takes time to understand and accept that because we humans have a tendency to attach to our past images. An entrepreneur is often identifying himself with his business and can’t accept its decline. I know I did this mistake.

What To Avoid

Although you reached the end of the journey, there are still some things you can do to make it worse than it need to be. Here’s what I found better to avoid.

Salvage

The first reaction at this stage is trying to salvage your business. Although you came through all the stages, from enthusiasm to leadership, it seems that things aren’t running quite smoothly as before, so, you need to change something, you need to save your business. Well, you can’t. At least, you can’t go back to the leadership stage. Trying to salvage the business will often lead to risky solutions and will make it more unstable than before. Salvage will do more harm than good at this stage. The salvation process is mostly at the entrepreneur’s psychological level, the business is following a normal pattern.

Depression

That’s serious. Depression is one of the most common consequences for an entrepreneur reaching the exhaustion stage. You’re so overwhelmed with guilt and frustration, you’re trying so hard to come back on the game, you’re feeling so sad because the leadership days are over, that your psychological circuits can break. Depression is pretty common among entrepreneurs, although the images of entrepreneurs aren’t showing it. And it’s in the final stage of a business that is most likely for the depression to appear. Well, be prepared.

Conclusions

Jumping to conclusions is also one of the most common mistakes in the exhaustion stage of a business. Been there, done that, I don’t want to do it anymore. You’re analyzing your success level by the current business level. If the business is going so slow, you tend to think your success is not for real. That’s jumping to conclusion. You forgot how much you accomplished so far and tend to minimize your efforts. This is why is so important to assess your business experience during the leadership stage. Exhaustion is natural, but so is leadership, so stick with leadership and just accept exhaustion.

What To Do

Every crisis is in fact an opportunity. The business exhaustion phase is usually a powerful trigger for several really liberating activities. Here are some of them.

Exit

During the exhaustion stage and entrepreneur is almost forced to make an exit. I’m not talking about an investor or manager perspective here, which might be completely different, but about the entrepreneur’s desire to ignite things, to start something for scratch, to create. Exhaustion stage is like the click for a new adventure. I never met any serious entrepreneur who “survived” an exhaustion stage. Keep in mind that an “exit” can be done in million ways: you can sell all, just a part, remain investor, silent partner, etc.

Delegate It Big Time

If you’re not going to sell, which is highly improbable, the next best thing is to delegate it big time. Find somebody to run the business for you. It could be a person, another business (like in integrating your business with another one) it can be a group, it can be anything, as long as it gives you the freedom to start again. Delegating is not “exit”, if you’re delegating the business you’ll still have to exert some control over it, but at least you won’t be taking it as serious as before. Delegating wasn’t an option for me, after I hit the exhaustion stage I decided the best thing for me was to sell it completely. Your mileage may vary.

Accept It

That’s the most difficult yet most rewarding step you can take during this stage. Accepting that your business, your initial idea, has hit a certain level and it won’t go further will open your eyes to new roads. You can’t really run again if you don’t accept that you finished something, there will always be some lose ends that will make your running slow. Just accepting that you’ve done everything was to be done and you’re ready to start something new will be a great gift for yourself. Acceptance is the door to your new adventures. Entrepreneurship is not about money, it never was, it’s all about adventure.

Run Again

That’s the final stage of your business. It was a great journey. You started with enthusiasm, continued with a lot of trust and naivety, become attentive and then hit the maturity level. With courage and inspiration you expanded beyond your imagination and finally become a leader. It was an incredible journey.

There is only one thing that could level with that experience. And that is your next journey.

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You can find the remaining 6 ages of your business on these fine personal development and business blogs:

• The Enthusiasm Business Age @ Attraction Mind Map
• The Naivety Business Age @ SmallBizBee
• The Attention Business Age @ Advanced Life Skills
• The Maturity Business Age @ Steven Aitchinson
• The Expansion Business Age @ Rat Race Trap
• The Leadership Business Age @ My Wife Quit Her Day Job

Guest Author:Dragos Roua is passionate about success, and he blogs at DragosRoua to share his insights about life’s many lessons and his travels and discoveries within it.  You can subscribe to his blog with his RSS feed here or catch him on Twitter @dragosroua