During the hustle and bustle of daily activity, it is easy to avoid streamlining and organizing your business. Many business owners can get sales done and product out to customers in spite of poor organization, so they put organizational tools on the back burner in favor of proven money makers.
The thing that many disorganized businesses don’t discover is how much time and money they can save simply through strategic organization. Disorganized business owners wonder why, no matter how hard they push their team, the competition always grows faster or beats them to the really high-quality clients.
In the end, it all comes down to the efficiency brought about through great organization.
Organizing Your Business Can be Simple
There are many organizational tools available for all or parts of your business. We won’t go into that technology here, as a business owner or his team members may need specialized organizing software for a particular industry. Instead, we are going to reveal some of the quick and easy strategies we provide our Business Success Consulting Group clients during an organizational consulting session.
1. Look at the big picture.
Often, when a business owner looks at trouble spots in his or her company, the focus narrows in on the area. When looking at organizing an entire business, you must take the broad view.
Take a look at your business as a whole and ask yourself what it would look like in a perfect world. Perhaps in that idealized vision your company would make a specific revenue, customers would be clamoring for more of your products, and your company would be featured in the Forbes top 100 list.
Now take a look at what state your business is in now. Getting a firm grasp on what the business could be versus what it is will allow you to see what can be improved immediately.
2. Make sure each department knows what you would like to accomplish.
Many issues with organization can be narrowed down to employees simply not knowing what the overall goal is for their department. This is another “big picture” that is missing from your business – your employees need to know the overall goal as well.
Once employees understand that they are working toward a specific goal, many will likely have ideas about how to create a more efficient workspace. Perhaps your sales team will decide to position their desks in a way that allows them to pass leads far more efficiently, or your accountants could use a more powerful system so that purchase orders don’t get lost in the mix.
3. Create a workflow.
One of the most common issues in any office is that work does not flow efficiently from one department to the other. This may be caused by space restrictions, floor plans, or it could be that no one person has been assigned in each department to handle orders. Talk to your team leads about rough spots and find out where orders, vital information, or customers are being lost.
The most common reasons that work gets lost between departments or even between employees in the same department are:
a) The assigned tasks from one employee to another are unclear. This makes it hard to know where to send information.
b) The physical flow of the office does not make sense, making the transfer of customers, exchange of information, and collaboration difficult.
c) There is nowhere to put urgent matters in a specific office – or no one to give them to who has the power to assign tasks.
d) There is no tracking system for ongoing tasks, allowing them to become half-way done and then fall through the cracks.
As you can see, every one of these situations is simple to resolve.
4. Assign key decision-making powers to your team leads.
It can be extremely hard to allow others to make decisions in your stead. That’s why many business owners hold on to their role as the final arbiter of all decisions in their company for far too long. Unfortunately, this habit creates a bottleneck at the top – causing departments and customers to wait for you. This keeps your business small and unable to expand.
Effectively delegating tasks and allowing others to make decisions about those tasks is a vital part of any expanding business. It can also be the most difficult thing any executive has to do. However, by giving the right people power to make decisions about their jobs, you are making their job more enjoyable and allowing them to be more effective leaders in their area. Additionally, delegation has the perk of providing you with more time to focus on other important matters.
5. Take advantage of organizational tools.
As we noted in the beginning of this article, there are many, many organizational tools available to you. Some tools are generally used in all businesses like email or accounting programs. Others may be specific to your industry. These tools are here to help you and your business become more organized. So, assign an employee to research the various tools available for your industry. Once the research is done, take a look at the results. Is there an easy, all-in-one organizational tool out there that will effectively save you time and money? If so, it’s time to dive in and utilize this tool to its fullest.
There are many simple ways to organize a business. Finding the most effective and efficient methods can be a challenge. If you are looking to organize your company and minimize wasted time and energy, contact us today. We will provide you with a free evaluation of your company’s efficiency.
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