Have you been operating your business for a while now, and have the lingering feeling that things could just be doing better than they currently are? I often talk to people just like you, and it’s all about making a decision to really be strategic with your business operations.
If you’re ready to take the next step, a business optimisation strategy might be for you. Things to consider are whether you’re happy with your results, profit, or bottom line; whether there are systems and processes you’re using that could benefit from a rethink; and if there are areas of your operations where you already know you could stand to improve.
A business coach can help you develop a small business optimisation strategy. This process usually involves three main steps, which I’d like to help you understand:
1. Assess your business
2. Make a concrete plan
3. Implement the plan and assess
Objectivity is the key to a successful assessment phase. It’s crucial that you can identify the areas of your business which need attention the most, and also the areas where you could benefit from further development to better achieve your goals. It’s pretty common for people to have blind spots, and without an objective perspective it can be easy to accidentally misunderstand what the real issues affecting your business are.
Once you’ve correctly and clearly identified where the work needs to happen, it’s time to put on your planning hat. This might be a time to re-jig your systems, go back to your employees and ask what could work better (or where their major, daily pain points are) and figure out how to produce better solutions – not just for the sake of your profit, but for your employee engagement and happiness as well. This isn’t the time to make knee-jerk decisions. It can be difficult to recognise and accept that you have been doing something in a less-than optimal manner, and it’s important that you can process this information and make decisions in a logical manner, without emotion getting in your way. Your plan should be able to look at the short term daily operation, and also your long term goal for the business – that way you can plan for challenges that may be far ahead.
Making it all happen! Yes, this brings us to implementation. A plan is all well and good, but it’s essentially worthless without the follow-through. A business coach can assist you in breaking down your plan into manageable goals and also assessing how it will impact the daily operations of your business.
