Bring in New Ideas & Support to Achieve Your Company’s Potential
As business owner, you don’t need the new year to get you thinking ahead. You are always looking down the road at what’s possible for your company and its impact on the world. As a future thinker you excel at seeing what could happen. But do you feel confident you know how to actually MAKE it happen? Is your vision clear to your team? Do things feel aligned? Are you seeing the progress you want?
The systems, processes, and communications developed in the early days of a business work until they don’t. It can feel like things are suddenly clunky, slow, and particularly for you, a bit painful. As hard as this phase can be, it’s a normal evolution of a growing business. You need new ideas, an outside perspective, and support to help transition the company’s internal workings to match where you are today.
Symptoms of Outgrowing What Worked
Too Many Internal Projects
- There is a never ending list of things to do, revise, improve, or document for the business, but it’s hard to get them done because clients come first
- Processes are clunky, people don’t have the information they need, and there is a lag in addressing issues that will make the team more efficient
Capacity Challenges
- The team seems busy, and you may even have some who are maxed out, but you don’t understand where the time goes or why things take so long
- There may be some team members stretched too thin and others who seem to or should have a lot of extra time but it’s hard to get a real handle on what’s going on
Accountability Is Limited
- Some members of the team don’t seem to grasp when they are accountable for a task, process or problem. It seems obvious to you, but this keeps coming up again and again.
- An experienced team member may own everything either because that’s how they feel most comfortable or because there are quite a few new folks. Either way, the responsibility for keeping things running smoothly isn’t being dispersed across the team and its causing issues.
- You see these challenges, but struggle to have the necessary conversations to address the underlying issues, maybe because why this is happening isn’t clear to you.
Turnover and/or Dead Weight
- Either you have been dealing with a continuous hiring replacement cycle or you have some folks on the team who have been there quite a while who are struggling to adjust to the new normal, perhaps a bit of both.
- You hope each new hire will provide the ideas, energy, and capacity to get things back on track but it just hasn’t happened yet.
- Your experienced folks are good at what they do, but don’t like change and resist improvements to processes, structure, or technology.
Change is Coming
- You are preparing for some significant changes in the future – acquisition, succession planning, or merger. You’re excited about these impending changes, but aren’t clear or confident in how it is all going to work.
- While you may not be ready to share this with your team, you sense there are things that can be done now to help pave the way for the future you are planning.
Strategies to Build for the Future
Reaching the business’ potential is possible, just not how things are currently. This is where bringing in outside help to add capacity and expertise can be the difference maker.
1. Add Leadership Capacity
Consultants offer ideas, but how are those ideas going to be implemented with your current team and processes? How can you ensure that the good stuff – your strengths, values, culture, and mission aren’t tossed along with what’s not working? A short-term addition to your leadership or management team can bring a fresh perspective, deep experience, and capacity to actually get things done.
- Sounding Board – That old saying about it being lonely at the top has roots in reality. Start by finding a mentor, peer group or consultant you can talk through what you’re seeing in your company. They can help pinpoint if you’d be best helped with additional human resource or operations support to start.
- Fractional Leaders – If your team is stretched thin, respond to that constraint by bringing in short-term support to address those internal projects that will help streamline how the business runs. Not sure what kind of fractional role to hire? Start with people and structure (see strategy #2).
2. Clarify Roles Now & In the Future
Think you can skip this one because you have job descriptions? Pause for a moment and consider:
- Responsibilities vs tasks – Job descriptions should be a summary of the specific ways the role contributes to the company’s success. How specific tasks are done belong in an SOP.
- What about the roles the company will need in a year or two? Are those identified along with the skills and attributes needed to identify the perfect candidate if you were to meet them?
3. Engage the Team in Long Term Planning
This isn’t as scary or onerous as you may think. These three steps can be adopted by companies of all sizes and increase engagement, clarity, and alignment.
- Reflect – Before moving to planning ahead, add a reflection process with your team to celebrate successes and identify learnings to apply in the future. Bringing the team into the debrief makes the wins and challenges more real and meaningful. You’ll also gain insights from those closest to the work.
- Review – Incorporate quarterly review and rest sessions to re-orient your leadership team to your long range goals and set short-term priorities to address things that have come up and take steps toward your big goals.
- Communicate – Provide quarterly updates on progress and new priorities to keep everyone aligned. You asked for their input in the reflection step, follow-up to keep the whole team engaged.
Want to know more about this strategy? Check out: Lay the Foundation Effective Strategic Planning
Feel Stuck or Overwhelmed?
Not sure what you need, where to start, or how to set your business up for long-term success? Reach out and let’s talk about where you are and the potential you see for your company.
Every company has its own culture, history, goals, and nuances. Aligning those unique attributes with solutions that work for where you are right now is the key to unlock your business’ potential. This is the work we love to do. Get in touch.