A lot of companies believe that a great marketing campaign, perfect customer relations and low prices are all that it takes for your business to thrive and prosper. While it would be absurd to claim that these three things can’t increase the number of new customers/orders you receive, this is hardly all it takes to achieve success. Imagine encountering a massive workload increase without the adequate infrastructure. This would most definitely end up in disaster, thus giving you the opposite effect of the one you primarily expected. In order not to allow this to happen you need to find a way to improve the internal structure of your SMB. Here are three simple tips that might get you on the right path.
1. Identify slackers
According to one definition, a small business is the one that has less than 100 employees while a medium sized one is the one that has under 1000. While on paper this seems quite formidable, you need to be aware that in reality, the number of employees in an average small business usually tends to be closer to 10 than to a 100. A similar thing goes for medium enterprises. This means that identifying and laying off a single slacker in your business, has a potential to significantly increase your productivity.
For this to work, however, you first need to learn how to recognize a slacker. People whose work constantly needs to be fixed, those who regularly argue or someone who never pitches in to help their coworkers (even though they expect this from others) are usually slacker employees.
2. Prepare your successor
If your business is still in its infancy, there might come a time where nothing can be done without your immediate intervention. Still, once your business surpasses a certain expansion threshold, you will no longer be physically able to micromanage everything. This will make a division between junior, middle and senior management in your company more than necessary, which is something you need to start thinking about on time.
Find a promising employee you believe could fill in your shoes and start preparing them to, one day, take over your position. Being a leader of a company doesn’t mean that you have to be the face of that company as well, which is why you may want to let your right-hand man lead a high-stakes meeting or hold an impactful presentation. What you need is someone who specializes in 1:1 training and aims at sharpening one’s skills, while still building up their confidence for more responsible positions. An example of this can be seen in services offered by Corporate Impact.
3. Better time management
Finally, you need to realize that the time is probably the most valuable resource you have. From this perspective, saving time means saving money, which can potentially make all the difference in the productivity of your company. This can range from something as simple as automating your social media, to a bit more tech-savvy solutions like getting self-watering planters for your office. Both of these innovations will help you employees focus on their primary responsibilities instead of being distracted by these secondary tasks.
Another thing that can save the time of your employees is the way you treat your business meetings. Sure, there are some pieces of information that simply must be sent right away, but if this is nothing major it can be done via circular email. Even when you do need to hold a meeting, have its points clearly outlined and leave some time for Q&A at the end, but aside from this, try to finish as quickly as you can.
Conclusion
While there are many other ideas which could potentially improve the internal structure of your company, some of them include outsourcing non-vital tasks, rearranging your corporate hierarchy and improving your means of communication. Nonetheless, the above-mentioned three are by far the most cost-efficient and quickest solutions to your problem. This is why they might be the best place to start this corporate reorganization.
