From Busy to Profitable: In the Highlands, commitment and community spirit run deep. Here, being busy is almost a badge of honour. But busy doesn’t always mean profitable. Activity without return is risk disguised as effort.
Too many SMEs wear exhaustion like proof of growth. If your time, team, or tools aren’t delivering margin, you’re not scaling – you’re spinning.
Peter Drucker, the famous management consultant, once said, “There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.”” Productivity without profitability is just busyness pretending to be progress.
Busy to Profitable – The Busy Trap
You know the signs:
- Full days, thin profits
- Endless tasks, but unclear progress.
- New hires that add to the work, not ease.
- The team are doing more while earning the same.
Activity can feel like momentum. But without commercial clarity, it is motion without results.
Growth for Good Principle: Progress isn’t about how much you do. It’s about how much value you generate per unit of effort.
Productivity vs Profitability
Productivity is output. Profitability is return. They are not the same.
- A shop that sells more at a loss is productive, not profitable.
- A service that delivers faster but undercharges is efficient, not successful.
- A founder who works 70-hour weeks may be busy but is still stuck.
A McKinsey study shows that companies that focus too much on operational effectiveness may overspend. They often link activities to profits in a way that fails to achieve effectiveness, resulting in high costs in non-core processes. This can hurt both their margins and team morale.
Know Your Contribution Activities
Not every task is equal. Some generate income, while others eat up time.
Segment your work (and your team’s) into:
- Direct Revenue: Sales, fulfilment, invoicing
- Revenue Enablers: marketing, partnerships, product improvement
- Operational Support: Admin, scheduling, stock control
- Noise: Tasks that look important but deliver nothing
Prioritise activities that drive cash and future growth. Drop or delegate the rest.
Busy to Profitable – the Highland Advantage: Less Noise, More Focus
In our region, fewer distractions can be a gift. Use that to create rhythm:
- Define one focus metric for each team.
- Block two hours daily for deep work.
- Run weekly reviews based on outcomes, not hours.
When you stop chasing busy, you start building a business that earns more with less. Three things you can try this week:
- Track your time for three days.
- Categorise tasks into Revenue, Enabler, Support, or Noise.
- Cut or delegate one non-revenue task per person.
Busy to Profitable is Growth for Good
