Is your idea of SMB (small and mid-size business) management and leadership actually a system of business process Band Aids?
If so, you manage Chaos instead of a system of interrelated, consistent and valuable foundational processes responsible for driving business growth.
Do any of these real-life SMB scenarios sound familiar?
- The CRM (Client Relationship Management) platform is underutilized by all employees. As a result, gaps in project details constantly create missteps in project execution.
- Employees feel free to bring something less than the best versions of themselves into the daily workplace. Consequently, not only in-fighting, but also employees hiding out to avoid conflict, drastically reduce productivity and profitability.
- Employees hoard information, instead of respecting management and leadership. As a result, company brand deteriorates, and clients vaporize.
Yes, there are a lot more of these exhausting, energy-draining examples I can provide. Enough is enough.
I have a question for you. How do you manage and lead when these issues raise their ugly heads, both short- and long-term? Click here and tell me all about it.
Business process Band Aids® are nothing more (or less) than ad-hoc reactions to “What Just Happened?”
When you manage or lead a system of business process Band Aids, there really is no system in place, at all. Why? Because you are never quite sure just “what” company you walk into each morning. The workplace always has an ad-hoc feel to it, because what happened yesterday has no context to or relationship with whatever is going to happen today and tomorrow.
Communication and collaboration gaps result in faulty input. Subsequently, throughput suffers. As a result of faulty throughput, output becomes inconsistent and product quality vacillates from job to job.
Ask yourself this question: is your company a continual “surprise” to you? If you are not confident, proactive and anticipatory of what to expect from the workforce and suppliers, as well as processes, neither are your customers.
Businesses do not survive and thrive on surprises. Does this statement surprise you?
Slapping business process Band Aids onto backend incident resolution causes businesses to break.
Let’s face it. Things are looking good on the front end! Sales people are oblivious to what’s going on, back end. They merrily sell away like gangbusters and do business with anyone who will buy from them.
From management and leadership’s perspectives, the key (and only?) indicator of business success is a signed contract. What possibly could go wrong?
After all, there is a production backlog which is interpreted as sales success. Yet, this scenario can be negative for business success. Backlogs often are red flags for operations shortfalls which negatively impact the ability to serve new, as well as existing, business.
Do you have more business than you, realistically, can handle?
As a result, current customers defect, however that information is a surprise. In addition, dependable, repeat business becomes stalled due to client-side internal issues, which no one on the vendor side is aware of, because they really do not stick close to customers. Also, new business represents low-hanging fruit, low-ball clients or companies with less than stellar reputations.
How did this happen? Well, when management and leadership find out news retrospectively, only at quarterly meetings, instead of daily updates, business processes become reactive instead of proactive.
How healthy is continuing this tack?
Healthy business processes leverage Collaboration instead of Chaos.
I know. You had a far better vision that this, when you started your business or were hired to serve within the workforce. However, business reality is a continuously changing set of business process Band Aids which ultimately impede business success.
When slapping a business process Band Aid on a situation becomes the workplace norm, eventually you ask yourself: “How did I get to this place?” Is this the place that you are at, currently?
You are not alone. Many SMBs find themselves in this situation, over time. When management and leadership realize what’s going on, they:
- Give in to a broken system, which now is their status quo; or
- Leave the company, sell it or close its doors; or
- Do something about it.
Let’s do something about it, shall we? Together.
Contact me. Let’s discuss a systemic approach and methodology that creates order out of chaos and delights not only the workforce, but also clients. Yes, hard work is involved. Hard. Rewarding. Work. After all, enduring solutions for business success are the result of collaboration over time.
Babette Ten Haken is a corporate catalyst and innovative speaker. She serves organizations as a strategist, coach and storyteller. Babette’s One Millimeter Mindset™ Workshops and Speaking programs leverage collaboration to catalyze professional innovation, workforce engagement and customer success for customer retention. Babette’s playbook of technical / non-technical collaboration hacks, Do YOU Mean Business? is available on Amazon.
Image author: Cigdem. Image source: Fotolia.
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