Finding and Fixing Trouble Spots That Stall Business Growth
Whatever you sell, you must constantly work to improve every part of your business or you’ll fall further behind until you become irrelevant and fade away.
Here are four steps to fix what needs fixing in any business.
Step One: Awareness
Awareness is simply knowing that some part of your business isn’t right. You’re not yet where you want or need to be in order to be a profitable market leader, to achieve world-class operating efficiency or to become your future vision.
Perhaps some of your products or services aren’t the best or you’re falling short in delivering the customer experience you’ve promised. Maybe you haven’t created the internal business culture required to attract, engage and keep first-rate people. Possibly you’re falling short in planning and budgeting, control, accountability, profitability or implementation and follow-up. Your shortfall could be in technology, systems or communication. It could be that you’ve not met your commitments to your community or the environment, or that there are non-performing or toxic employees you haven’t dealt with.
The beginning of wisdom is the recognition of reality. Without awareness, there will be no improvement. But awareness alone will get you nowhere.
Step Two: Ownership
Many business owners and managers refuse to take ownership of their problems. They blame something or someone else — a competitor, supplier, government, the weather or another country. For example, if you’re having a problem attracting and retaining top performers, blame may go to the lack of good people to hire; however, the truth is the best people have to work for somebody and they’ve chosen another company.
Other businesses know where they’re falling short and it’s their fault, but lack the ability, energy, urgency or passion to fix it. They’re over their heads, burnt out or just don’t care.
You’ll never solve a problem unless you first take ownership and are committed to fixing it.
Step Three: Analysis, Creativity, Decision, Action
Here’s where the real work begins. If it’s a problem you’re solving, get to the real root cause. Don’t just attack surface issues. If it’s an opportunity you’re pursuing, make sure you have all the important facts. Either way, if your analysis is incorrect, your action will likely be wrong, too. Same goes for the intended outcome.
Encourage creativity within your organization and know when to ‘rent’ creativity from the outside. Ask your team, suppliers and customers for ideas. In doing so, you’ll learn from and honour them.
Don’t try to reinvent the wheel. Find out what other successful businesses are doing about the problem or opportunity you’re working on and then try to do it better.
What ideas, when implemented, would blow customers away, clearly differentiate you from your competitors or deliver a big operational advantage that will transform your bottom line? And what are the costs and benefits of each idea?
Be sure not to analyze and create forever. Commit to a course of action in a reasonable time frame. There’s more money lost through indecision than wrong decision.
Finally, commit to an action plan that clearly states what will be done, by whom, by when, at what cost and with what outcomes, and how results will be measured and rewarded. Involve all those whose support you need or who are affected by the implementation process. Make sure they understand why this project is important to the business and to them. Determine what additional information or resources your team will need to be successful and make sure they get it.
Step Four: Implementation and Follow-up
Businesses don’t die from a single shot to the head. They perish, slowly but surely, from a thousand uncompleted tasks.
Effective implementation is one of the biggest challenges in most businesses today. The solution: Every time you assign a task to someone or a team, agree on a specific date by which it will be completed or when an update must be provided. Document that commitment and always follow-up. Then, hold people accountable, celebrate success, reward accomplishments and deal firmly but fairly with non-performance.
Donald Cooper has been both a world-class manufacturer and an award-winning retailer. Now a Toronto-based business speaker and management coach, he helps business owners and managers rethink, refocus and re-energize their business to create compelling customer value, clarity of purpose and long-term profitability. Donald can be reached at donald@donaldcooper.com.