STEPS TO SUCCESS

The need to future proof your business has never been more apparent. Coming immediately out of an unprecedented year, it now looks like we could be heading towards inflation and rising interest rates. However, the past year has also seen startling innovation and well-managed risk taking from leading business owners and operators.

Plans for businesses strategy and future planning is always open to interpretation, but in my 30 years’ experience, I have found that following these six guiding principles are the difference between growth and success, or stagnation and death.

Step one: Examine your Financials

In a business, cash-flow is king. It’s not enough to know that you are making money, you need to get under the skin of where your profit is generated, how can you increase the margin for those profit centres, and who your best customers are.

Step two: The Cost of Mistakes

Delve into where your business is losing money. To take an example of construction, if the wrong material arrives on site and the job can’t be completed, you need to know why. What was the root cause of the mistake, was it planning, communication, staff training, software malfunction or something else?

Unless you know this, you won’t know what it cost you and we aren’t just talking the cost of staff doing nothing all day. In the long-term, loss of reputation and staff morale can all end up costing you more that it cost to fix the mistake.

Step three: Processes

Processes form the framework of your businesses, and you need your framework to be made from strong stuff! Using the family of ISO 9000 Quality Management Systems, or even doing a back-to-basics review to make sure that your processes are sound, will future proof your business and make sure it works properly. Without the right framework in place, your business will collapse.

Step four: Know thy customer

As we all know, people do business with people, not businesses. By taking the time to understand your customers’ pain points you can then implement changes to alleviate them. Understanding the customer journey and investing time building the relationship will increase their loyalty to your business, making them unlikely to be swayed by price reductions somewhere else.

Step five: Measure Everything

Hard data is crucial to planning for the future of your business and you need to measure everything: conversion rates, retention rates, customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction, delivery on expectation and more. Customers don’t tell you they are unhappy; they vote with their feet. If they dislike your service or product, they just won’t use you again and possibly tell others not to either. The solution to this is to measure constantly, learn by trial and error, and innovate all the time.

Step six: Take People on a Journey

Leaders must make sure that all staff are on the same journey, making sure that organisational and employee objectives are aligned. If your employees don’t know what your objectives are, they won’t prioritise them. They are your troops in the war of economy, and without the right tools and information they can’t fight for you.

There is an oft repeated adage: If it’s not broke, don’t fix it. I would suggest this is replaced by: If it’s not broke, make it better. Always make it better, always innovate, question, measure and test. Gather the hard data and talk to your customers.

Businesses, like sharks, have to keep moving and if you stop; you’ll die. Looking at static profit may feel safe, but just like any doctor will tell you, a flatline is not a good thing.