I was honored to present at the national PDCA Residential Forum in San Diego earlier this year. Because our family-owned business is experiencing growth in terms of revenue, profits and reputation, the organizers asked me to share my insights with the other attendees.

As I prepared for the talk, I worked to distill the reasons for our success into a few key points that my fellow business owners could adopt in their own companies. The result is a set of four principles I believe are the key to our accomplishments.

1. Get help

Everyone has weaknesses and blind spots. When you're the leader of an organization, those limits have ripple effects that hinder progress and frustrate people in the company.

As one example, I didn't realize I was not as approachable as my staff needed me to be. Separate from how I interacted with staff members, I was stuck in a situation where I received little support. As with leaders of other companies, I found myself without someone in which I could confide (or who would hold me accountable).

By hiring a business coach, I was able to get help with my role as leader and learn business practices that would get my employees "on board" with the company's direction.

2. Plan ahead

The coaching help I received allowed me to see the company was running in a reactive mode. Day-to-day thinking makes for an unstable company.

In recent years, my management team and I have adopted a pattern of setting goals (company and personal) and making plans to achieve them. When H.J. Holtz & Son staff members didn't have common goals, they didn't know where they were going and the company failed to improve.

Our planning process — consisting of year-end meetings, kick-off meetings, and quarterly and monthly update meetings — sparked improvements in sales, scheduling and marketing practices.

3. Assemble your team

As a company that offers a diverse set of services, I formerly viewed the organization as 7 to 10 separate companies. This made for little consistency in the way things got done.

By treating our staff as more of a single team — a group of people who have different roles, but work together — we began to accomplish more.

The practices of having regular meetings, setting common goals and creating plans to achieve those goals created the opportunity for the team to form and individuals (beyond me) to step into more responsible roles.

4. Create structure

As "I" became "we," it was important for me to establish defined roles and relinquish "ownership" of certain responsibilities to others. We created an organization chart to formalize the new ways we made decisions and shared responsibilities.

Structure also means the company relies less on one particular person (me), so I can take a vacation once in a while! Moreover, I can spend time and energy plotting the long-term course of the company.

Now, when we notice a problem that seems to repeat, we often recognize there is an underlying process that no one "owns." Because we understand how we benefit from structure, we know fine tuning that structure will help us address the new problem.

Results

All of this work has translated to growth in revenue and profits, as well as both employee and customer loyalty. Along with more of an "ownership" mentality, we have been able to introduce a profit-sharing plan with employees.

We certainly haven't solved every problem, but we no longer spin our wheels. The shifts we have made based upon these four principles allow us to roll up our sleeves, continue to make improvements and enjoy the results.