In this blog, I want to talk to you about How to Improve the Productivity of your Business.
I talk to so many people that are busy, they are busy just being busy! When in business it is so easy to get caught up doing “Stuff”, you know Stuff that makes you feel like you are doing a good job and make you happy. However, how much of that “Stuff” is honestly putting money in the bank?
So the question here is, how do you measure what actually gets done? How do you measure whether you had a good month?
At the end of the day, if you’re not measuring your business and not measuring your KPI’s (Key Performance Indicators) of your people, systems, processes, or strategy, then how on earth do you know that what you are doing is working or not?
Having a sustainable business is all about being efficient, effective, and doing what matters.
In the world that we are living in today where we have a handful of commercial challenges from Brexit, potential recessions, as well as competitors from overseas and through the internet, it is absolutely crucial that if we want to be successful and have a sustainable business we really need to look at our productivity and adjust our plans as and when.
So how do we do this? How do we measure productivity within our organisations?
One way is to look at our people. We can look at what they are actually doing when they come to the office in the morning and checking to see if it aligns with our top-level strategy. Secondly, we look at our systems. Are they quick? Are they efficient? Are they delivering the results that WE want and WHEN we want?
Finally, how do our processes work? Do we have robust processes? Do we have too many procedures?
With those questions in mind, let me share with you three Innovate to Success Golden Nuggets on how I have helped many over the years to improve the productivity of their business:
Tip 1
What Gets Measured, Gets Done
If you don’t decide and write down your key performance indicators (KPI), and you don’t know what you’re measuring, then how do you know if you are on track?
The first thing to do, is to write down your key outputs i.e. Sales Targets, serving a certain number of customers, signing up a number of contracts etc. Understand what the key measures are, figure out what does a bad month look like, and what a good month would look like, and measure it regularly.
Then align that with your targets, you know, how much you need to deliver to make it a profitable month. Then track both numbers over the next few weeks and you will start to see where you need to focus your activities of your team.
This will help drive focus and also improve your productivity as it will help you look back at your past performance, and it will help you forecast the future.
Tip 2
Managing Workload to Prevent Overwhelm
Running a business can be stressful enough as it is, however without robust systems and processes then you are really asking for trouble. Not only do we need them in place, we need to make sure that they are working.
So, let’s look at our people and whether they are being effective. Ask yourself the question “What tasks can I leverage?”. If we have efficient processes that are mapped out and work, then it will be much easier to pass on lower level tasks to others.
Correct delegation is a very powerful tool. It is one of the easiest ways to empower and pass responsibility to other members of your team and by doing this is also the quickest way to stop ourselves from getting overwhelmed. Simply because you are spreading the workload
Let’s take a look then at where you are getting busy, where are you stressed and then find out WHY we’re getting busy and why we are getting stressed, make a note and make some plans to alleviate the bottlenecks.
Tip 3
Focusing on R.G.A.
Finally let’s focus on earning cash every single day, here we look at RGA – Revenue Generating Activities.
We must keep reminding ourselves that we are in business to make money. The more money we make, the stronger the business becomes and the stronger the business becomes, the more value we can provide to our customers.
All businesses have the ability to be sustainable and we must therefore focus every day on revenue generating tasks. You know, then ones that will directly bring in cash to the business.
Once our systems are up and running then it makes its much easier to identify RGA and Non RGA. We do this by focusing by making sure that everything that we do revolves around driving sales, reducing costs, and being productive.
Take a look at what you and your team ACTUALLY do in a day and then catagorise them into RGA and Non RGA task and watch your results improve.
I hope you enjoyed those three tips and tricks, and don’t forget that in the UK, (on average) it takes us five days to finish a task, whereas in Europe it takes only four days, why is that? Let’s get productive by getting smart.
I know that you can be successful and I know that you can have a business that can outperform others and give you the lifestyle that you thrive for. For many of us it involves doing things a little different which can be tricky to start with, however as I know well worth it in the end.
If you like this blog then please check out my others blogs as well and also look out for my DRIVE for Business programme where you will find more practical tips and tricks on how to extract more profit from your organisation, prepare your business for growth and get you the lifestyle that you want.
Finally don’t forget to keep up to date with my Podcast “Be your Best in Business” – https://innovatetosuccess.com/podcast.
Now you go and have a great day!