Have you struggled to make your organization proactive rather than reactive? If your organization is stuck in a culture of being reactive, the shift of coming from behind to getting ahead of problems can seem overwhelming to any business owner.
Where do you even start? Systematic organizational problems can stem from many different areas of the business. Whether your team cannot seem to track invoices overdue, make headway on a major project, or lack the data to make informed financial and operational decisions, tackling issues within your company as a whole can seem impossible.
The solution, just take it one-step-at-a-time.
Identify the biggest area of concern, and then focus on that area only first. when addressing the first problem, it is imperative that you think each and every step through to develop a comprehensive plan of how you will address it.
When the Project1DONE team was working with a client recently, the issues that were present in the company were insurmountable. It all came down to the key area of concern, which was data integrity and the ongoing maintenance of that data for it to be usable for all departments in the organization.
Without a doubt! This business was operating in multiple software systems, all disconnected from one another. Each department maintains its own lists of accounts that may or may not reflect recent changes that have taken place from other departments. The company’s informational hub was comprised of paper documents dating back 30 plus years with no true process for filing or disbursement of information. Without accurate real-time data, how are decisions supposed to be made efficiently and effectively?
This was the identified major issue that needed to be resolved first. Every other problem that exists within the company would never be solved if the data was not centralized to one platform where everyone could access it and a process was in place to maintain the information. Once that was under control it opened up the door for bigger and better improvements to start to be developed.
So the key is to fully identify your biggest pain point within your organization and tackle it first. Don’t get bogged down trying to do everything at once. That is a recipe for disaster.
The next step is identifying who in your company is able to tackle the task at hand. Or is it going to be you?
This next step is the hardest step of all. Because while it may be easy to identify your biggest problem, it may not always be easy to take the time to tackle the problem yourself, or you may not have employees that are capable of tackling something to this magnitude and seeing it through.
Small business owners are busy, and wear many hats. If you are struggling to find a way to tackle those problems within your organization, maybe it is time to call in the experts. Your bottom line depends on it.
If you are looking for a solutions minded company that will help you plan and execute a process improvement, call the Project1DONE team today and let us get involved.