Does your business feel chaotic? Here’s what to change!
In your business, have you noticed it’s feeling a little chaotic and un-organised?
Are you constantly answering questions, putting out fires and solving problems?
Do you spend time repeating information from one place or system to another, multiple times?
Do you feel like you a managing one internal crisis after another?
Individually, many of these questions on their own is very common. But when the questions are repeated on a more than frequent basis, your business time, cost, and patience level will be stretched, and if you aspire and/or hold goals to grow your business whether by 10% or something greater at 50% -100% then your current level of chaos will become stretched and at times to breaking point!
It’s time to change.
It’s time to put in place new ways that will move your business dial from Chaos to Responsive!
So how do I do this, you may ask.
Here are 6 solutions to move your business into being more responsive:
1. Reduce and eliminate the questions – Take a moment to listen to the questions being asked. Why do they keep being asked? Is it due to a lack of information? or training? Or skill?
Solution ~ Solutions that reduce and eliminate the questions, for example hire the skills you need if you don’t have time or skill to train people well or re-train your employees to reduce the questions, ensure key processes are well documented and accessible to enable individual research and eliminate questions.
2. Build the answers into services and products – Are the questions your employees are asking questions from your customers? If yes, can these be built into services and products for sale?
Solution ~ Anticipating customer needs and building products and services that meet those needs will grow your business, provide a proactive service, and generate more revenue.
3. Reduce and eliminate the repetitive tasks – Are your Employee’s repeating tasks at a consistent volume level? What are those tasks?
Solution ~ Identifying the repetitive tasks and assessing whether they can be automated, integrated, or eliminated will reduce time and quality impacts. This additional time can then be re-invested into improving skills through further training, or services and actions that generate revenue that anticipate and answer customers needs!
4. Predict problems – Being able to anticipate challenges or problems in your business, and devising actions that will get in front of the problem to stop, delay, or redirect it will save your business time and money, and will potentially improve customer interactions, experience, service, quality, and your business brand.
Solution ~ Listen to the questions being asked by customers and employees, be aware of commercial, business and market changes, and ask your employees what they see or hear, and devise actions and plans to combat these changes and challenges. Be in front of challenges and issues will provide you with more time to think, plan, and respond rather than react on the run!
5. Build a great team – Every business owner knows that finding great people is HARD but it’s so important to hire or build a great team. A team that is informed, knowledgeable, well trained, works well within the team, and does the work asked to a high standard is key to their and your success!
Solution ~ If you can’t hire great team members then you need to build them. Hire team members that demonstrate the values of your business, an ability to think and be resourceful and a strong work ethic. Teach the rest with good training and supervision.
6. Analyse trends - To assist the future you want to analyse the data you have available today. Analysing trends and real time data will enable you to ensure your business remains proactive, anticipating and meeting market needs. IT, Financial, Sales, Supply Chain, and Customer data is some of the most important to review frequently.
Solution ~ Identifying through data and conversation the trends in your business and the reasons for them will assist you in planning next month, next season, next year. Trend data will assist in forecasting what you need and when. It will help you to monitor your suppliers and buy what you need and at a better rate based on your data and negotiation techniques as an example.
If you would like more solutions and tools to improve your business operations further:
register for our monthly Agile Insights,
visit our store for our Boost your Business Playbook, or
Contact Us to discuss how we can help you!
AGILITY BUSINESS | Making business life easier from the first conversation
Disclaimer - This information is designed to be general business and employment information. You should seek professional advice that is based on your business circumstances prior to its use. Purchasing and/or utilising any of our templates, tools, agreements, documents does not constitute professional advice including legal advice.