Make efficiency your differential

Efficacy is key. If you are not operating near your optimal output, then you are losing money, customers and time.

Ensuring your people, processes and systems are running to the best of their ability, sounds like the logical thing all businesses should doing, but it is surprising how easily this gets forgotten. Amongst the natural evolution organisations undergo as they scale, maximising efficiency can get lost, as new initiatives take up the finite resources and energy available.

Continual improvement is the name of the game, but do you have the players to take part?

A limiting mindset – Rose tinted glasses

Vanity metrics are indicators that flatter company performance. These might include turnover, sales, website visits, or any piece of data that misrepresents progress towards longer-term, more valuable goals.

It is often the case that managers will communicate these vanity metrics with greater fervour to their leaders. You can’t blame them for this, who’s going to focus on the negatives when trying to impress their seniors. I would instead put the responsibility on the leaders above the managers, whose job it is to drill down into the data, to find the most insightful key performance indicators.

Beyond the false story this focus on vanity metrics tells, it also means aspects that require improvement are left on the back burner. The ‘making do’ mentality will mean people, processes and systems that really need attention continue to underperform, or worse still, regress.

If you’ve been looking at your company with rose tinted glasses, it’s time take them off.

 

A missing element – Team work makes the dream work

One of the major challenges of running a successful business is making sure all its constituent parts run cohesively. Department heads, or even at a micro level, individual managers will like to work differently and tying this separate pieces together can be difficult.

Work against silos forming within your organisation by introducing a playbook that aligns approaches and practices. Each subsection of your business should be aligned on the following:

• Internal communication methods from staff to staff

• External communication methods from staff to client or associate

• Presentation and communication of reports

• Performance review regularity and follow-up

• Ideally, software and digital systems

If your business is pulling in many varied directions, it stands to reason that your progress will not be optimal.

Being an inspirational leader is important for solving this challenge, which stems so much from creating a healthy and productive attitude company wide. Demonstrate that you are all working together towards a common aim, by building relationships between departments or managers. This might involve rethinking how meetings are orchestrated or even organising social events out-of-office to form better bonds.

A different perspective – Piece-by-piece

In my coaching, I recognise the value of incrementalism. Some problems need urgent attention and wholesale change, but generally people, processes and systems can be improved bit-by-bit. There are three things that must be present for this development strategy to work.

1.  Mindset – Leaders should be constantly interrogating whether what they currently have could be better. As part of this, they should also be encouraging employees to speak up, if they have considered a new, more efficient way of working.

2.  Review – Following on from the point above, revision and evolution should be discussed by key decision makers and specialists to discuss what change they want to make and how this can be achieved. These meetings should be regular and are as important for touching base as they are for enacting transformation.

3.  Investment – Improvement doesn’t come free. Leaders should set aside specific research and development budget, so the sufficient resources are available. In line with this, control the workload, so those with the most appropriate skillets have the time and energy to invest.

Don’t dismiss a focus on efficiency amongst your hectic quest for growth. You will find that progress is far quicker and more sustainable with leaner, more effective processes. The changes you make might seem negligible, but when they all add up, it won’t go unnoticed.