Identifying Missing Pieces
Business Frustrations are commonplace in all businesses. The effectiveness of solving those frustrations depends on the perspective a company holds when a frustration arises on how to handle the fallout and what to do to ensure it doesn’t happen again.
Frustrations can be viewed as ‘missing pieces’ in a business that need to be built and implemented to ensure smooth running company operations that meet your desired standard of customer service. When a frustration occurs, the tendency is to blame employees, the economy, the weather, yourself or anything else that might give you a momentary sense of relief.
But that doesn’t help anything in the long run. The opportunity is to identify what is missing that would ensure an outcome that meets your standard consistently and then put that solution in place.
The False Solution
When a frustration first shows up, it is easy to jump to a false conclusion about what is causing it. The true cause of the frustration may not be immediately obvious. For example, a company may be showing a loss during a particular quarter. It would be easy to assign blame to the sales team for not making enough sales. But upon further investigation, the numbers show that the sales team is meeting and even exceeding their sales goals regarding the number of sales per quarter.
As it turned out in this case, it was the pricing that was wrong. Costs to produce the sales had increased, yet nothing had been done to adjust the sales price to ensure a profit with each sale. In this case, the better the sales team did, the deeper into the hole the company went. Understanding the true cause of the frustration uncovered the solution needed; an increase in pricing.
The True Solution
In order to understand the root cause of the frustration, the first step is to ask a lot of questions about the frustration at hand. The answers to those in-depth questions will lead you to the right solution. The solution is often a missing system or other aspect of the business infrastructure. As you get to the heart of the frustration and understand its nature by the deep questioning, you can then ask yourself, “What is the missing piece, that would solve this frustration?”
In the case of my example, the missing piece might be a Pricing Review System. Or, even better, a system that flags all the systems that touch pricing when costs increase. Or perhaps what is needed is a more accurate Pricing System that reflects true costs more accurately from the get go. Or, an unexpected solution might be that you need more regular, accurate and complete Financial Statements that show you where you stand with your sales, costs and profit. The true solution can only be revealed by following the thread of the frustration back to its underlying cause.
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I offer a complimentary Business Assessment that transforms your top business frustrations into solutions. You leave the meeting with the solutions. If you want help building the solutions and implementing them, that’s when clients engage my help.
Call Janice at 707-326-5681 to schedule your complimentary Business Assessment to identify the missing pieces that will transform your business frustrations into your business solutions. Or, click here to fill out your complimentary GAP Analysis online: https://www.intentionalleaders.com/worksheet.html. Once you submit it, I will call to schedule your complimentary Business Assessment.
