Whether you’re a small business owner, serial entrepreneur, or web start-up—growing pains are part of any small business on the rise. Verne Harnish points out insightful solutions and fundamental changes businesses should make to boost the bottom line.
Manage Your Growth
Any company that has experienced any form of significant growth has to deal with the growing pains associated with success. Harnish lays out the plan for addressing these issues before they arise, suggesting easy changes in the day-to-day operations and long-term strategic planning necessary to unlock your business’ full potential.
Harnish stresses strong structural framework must be established for any sustainable business model. Without this, growth will result in instability, internal pressures will increase and the company’s level of service will suffer. In addition to creating a strong framework, he outlines a number of fairly simple changes that companies can make to improve their chances of success.
- Priorities
- Data
- Rhythm
Know Your Priorities
If you consider yourself to be a master multitasker—chances are you’re not. Among the many practical solutions that Harnish suggests in managing priorities, multitasking is not one of them. Instead, it’s key to focus 100 percent of attention on fewer priorities. The more time spent completing the important task most often means the most impact on the actual bottom line. Think about it. How often do you really spend “multitasking”?
Rinse & Repeat
Practicing time and priority management habits need to be exercised both on larger scale and on a daily basis. A company can establish priorities, funnel data for evolution and get into a rhythm by constructing a one-page strategic plan. Harnish claims that this plan will help to eliminate confusion by making the strategic planning process as straightforward as possible.
Maintaining the habits is something that can be accomplished every morning. Harnish suggests that teams meet for morning huddles. These huddles should begin at the executive level and work their way down the chain of command, until even the interns have met with their teams. Teams should spend their time in huddles raising concerns, asking for new perspectives and addressing obstacles. With this structure, teams can confront problems earlier in the day and make their teams as efficient as possible.
Applying The Habits
On a daily basis Rocket Clicks has made a point of adopting some of these habits, and the results have been remarkable. Quarterly and annually, the team creates the one-page strategic plan. Once it has been completed, all employees have access to all of the information concerning company’s goals and plan to achieve them. Even better, everyone knows what their role is in achieving those goals.
Each morning, Rocket Clicks holds daily huddles that involve everyone from executives to interns. In ten minutes or so, our teams are able to get a handle on the biggest problems facing each employee. Everyone who needs to know knows. With strict time limits, these huddles do not devolve into gossip or small talk, instead staying focused on the task at hand. No one loses interest or claims to be too busy when the huddles continue to hold real value. Making a true attempt to solve problems and offer feedback will increase employee happiness and motivation.
Rocket Clicks Staff
Abby Wolf
