Business Frustrations are Commonplace
It is not unusual for businesses to experience frustrations. Usually, those frustrations can be remedied by building and implementing essential components of business infrastructure that are missing; causing these frustrations. By putting these missing pieces in place, many of the frustrations that arise can be eliminated. This is significant since a lot of time is often spent in business, trying to solve frustrations that occur, only to find that they recur. Without these missing pieces, over time, chaos becomes the order of the day and way too much time is spent on firefighting instead of simply delivering your product or service.
What causes the disconnect? Usually it’s a lack of shared expectations that gets in the way of accountability and meeting the company’s standards. A consistently excellent customer experience is glue that holds a business together in the eyes of the customer. The right question is “How do we achieve that degree of consistency?” All too often, the blame game is what happens instead. That is not helpful and certainly doesn’t produce to a sustainable solution.
You Don’t Know What You Don’t Know
What a lot of business owners don’t know, is that there is a path to building a successful business that establishes a solid foundation that is sustainable over time and responsive to a changing marketplace and the challenges that come the growth. Instead, many businesses rely on certain individuals that are skilled at their job function to hold things together. Depending on certain talented people can come back to haunt you unless you have your foundation for success in place. Because, if they leave, their absence puts your business at risk since their expertise goes with them.
The Way Out
A business that is people dependent is at risk, no matter how effective those people may be. The remedy is to put systems and standards in place that create shared expectations and agreement leading to accountability and a consistent high quality customer experience. Is your foundation for business success in place? Are your employees clear on what their job is and the standards you expect them to meet? Is there a clear vision of where you are all headed together as a team? Has each employee agreed to achieve the work of their job up to your required standards? Are they clear and excited about your vision for the business and the end game?
Many business owners have an idea of where they are headed and what their expectations of employees are without communicating those things clearly to their employees, except when something goes wrong. For everyone to be on the same page, how you work together and who is accountable for what have to be crystal clear and in writing for employees to reference. Without that, it’s not fair to the employees to expect them to know what you have in mind. Shared expectations must be explicit with agreement for accountability to be the result.
What Does This Mean for Your Business?
Is your foundation for business success in place? If you want a fresh perspective on how to maximize employee productivity and minimize business frustrations, call Janice for a complimentary conversation at 408-884-8861. And if you want to decrease your business frustrations and increase success, check out the Work Flow Documentation tab at www.intentionalleaders.com
