Marie Kondoing your business
Marie Kondo is an organising consultant whose methodical approach to decluttering has grown a worldwide following over the past few years. Her practices are built around a simple, five-step process:
Discarding by category comes first
Break a category into subcategories as necessary
Keep only those things that spark joy
After you’ve finished discarding, organise your space thoroughly and completely
Do it all in one go
There is an amount of detail behind each step, but the basic principle is to keep things that serve or bring you joy. Simple but liberating when applied.
So, this got me thinking that there must be a way of simplifying our businesses with a similar process. As organisations grow they add weight and complexity to the centre, which may once have been needed, but will soon become a liability rather than an asset. We all want to operate within a lean business, with the minimal overhead required and the crispest processes possible. However, by disregarding ‘decluttering’ we end up running a slightly bloated and over-complicated company, which is more time consuming and costly than necessary. As a result, the profitability is less than optimal and the efficiency is below its potential. This is no-one’s fault, just resultant of a lack of awareness and focus.
If this has got you curious about what you could do to ‘declutter,’ here is my own five-step process you may wish to work through:
Adopt the mantra: ‘What got us here might not get us there’ – this will enable you to gain the required detachment from the status quo.
Review your organisational structure – if you were setting your business up tomorrow, would you replicate this structure? If not, what would it look like and how could you transform what you currently have to the ideal? Have you got the right skills and experience on board for the next stage of your journey?
Segment your current customer/client base by profitability – where are you making your profits? Are all your customers/clients actually profitable? Are there any that you should let go to free up resources for more profitable potential clients?
Simplify your offerings – are all the items on your ‘menu’ still required and in demand? Do you have services or products that are either losing relevance, or not giving you the required ROI? What should be your core offering be in the future
Consider your own role and key deliverables – in theory, as leader, you should be able to choose how you spend your time, but is that the current reality? Are you over-focusing on operational level challenges and avoiding bigger strategic thinking? How should you ideally be spending your time?
I believe this rethinking activity fits perfectly into Q4 and should provide you with improved clarity around the changes that must be made ahead of 2022. This will ensure you are giving yourself the optimal opportunity for creating a better business moving forward.