Your Business Lags Because You Are Not Doing These 6 Things
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The way we do business is rapidly changing. As customers increasingly demand goods and services delivered in all hours, in record time and often at a record low price, small businesses are increasingly challenged to stay at pace with large companies who are better equipped to adapt to market changes.
As a small or mid-size business, housekeeping is often the core reason for the friction which slows your business down in critical moments chaining you to a back office plagued with administrative burden and making you incapable of harnessing your true potential.
In this exert from this process excellence for small businesses job aid, we share with you our 6-steps to scalability self-assessment checklist harnessing the basic principles of operational excellence to help you frame your value proposition, identify key areas of improvement and get your business under control to prepare for the great growth that lies ahead.
6 THINGS STOPPING YOU FROM SCALING YOUR SMALL BUSINESS
1. You are not role-oriented
It may seem silly to make an organisational chart that has more teams than people working in your company but this is exactly the reason you are overworked; you are wearing too many hats simultaneously.
RECOMMENDED ACTION: Make an organisational functional chart imagining your business 5 years from today with your ideal number of teams and the roles you would need filled to support them. Think big while doing so to tap into your imagination to help you better understand the business you want to build!
2. Your processes are not defined
When trying to take explain to your stakeholders what critical activities are required to make your company successful you have difficulty.
ACTION: Using the org chart you just created in step 1, 'box' each process into its corresponding business function (team). Do this so that you can then track all their required support documents and process optimisation opportunities for future evaluation
3. Your strategy is not clear
Multinational organisations set annual goals based on their long-term, breakthrough vision to conquer their market. This should be no different for the little guy.
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RECOMMENDED ACTION: use the hoshin kanri logic to create a short list of long-term breakthrough goals and identify what strategic initiatives (investments) are necessary to achieve them
4. You are not using metrics to benchmark progress
The only way to have meaningful, non-confrontational, discussions with your clients, vendors and employees is to have a valid set of performance indicator reports to review consistently and help you shine a spotlight in real time when performance is suffering.
RECOMMENDED ACTION: Identify what KPIs are of critical relevance and carve out time in your diary regularly to review them together with their stakeholders.
5. Your portfolio of improvement projects is not visible in PLAN-DO-CHECK-ACT format
Lack of EFFECTIVE administration with your portfolio of open projects, who is accountable for them and what status they are in causes you excess time and energy in your daily prioritisation efforts.
RECOMMENDED ACTION: Use a dashboard to list all your projects in p-d-c-a format. review THIS at the end of every day TO PREPARE YOUR TASK LIST FOR TOMORROW
6. You do not use the R-A-C-I Accountability Matrix properly
Without having a clear understanding regarding how each role supports each process, you are setting yourself up for excessive friction and confusion.
RECOMMENDED ACTION: Use the R-A-C-I Accountability Matrix when assigning tasks to your team to enhance sense of ownership
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1yThanks for the updates on The Business Value Creation.