Chart Your Course for 2013

By Joy Stroud Ruhmann,
President, Level Up Leadership

Have you started your planning for 2013? 

 

Whether you run a small business, a division of a larger organization work or for a non-profit, it's imperative that you spend time working ON your organization, not just IN your organization. That means:

1. Planning for the future and ensuring that every member of your team has a clear vision of where the organization is headed and how what they do contributes to your success.
2. Making sure you have the right people in the right jobs doing the right things for the right reasons; and
3. Ensuring your processes are both efficient while also being customer and employee friendly.

It's these three key steps, along with hard work and consistent focus, that result in sustainable profitability and success.

 

Let's explore each step more closely:

 

Planning Your Future: Have you established your strategy for 2013 and beyond? Are your employees all clear about how what they do on a day to day basis impacts the achievement of your strategy?

 

Success lies in clearly identifying your mission, vision and core values, defining your corporate goals and initiatives and tying the goals and objectives of each and every employee back to your corporate goals. Not only will this help ensure alignment of personal goals to organizational goals, it naturally transitions to step 2 - where you have the right people, in the right jobs, doing the right things, for the right reasons.

 

Right People, Right Job, Right Thing, Right Reasons: Every employee I know comes to work every day wanting to do the right things. Unfortunately, for many, their managers are so busy doing their own day to day work, they don't spend enough time doing their part of working ON the business by giving their employees good direction and really effective feedback.

 

Clarity as to expectations and consistent and regular feedback are two critical components to engaging employees to do their very best. In its recent employee engagement survey, Randstad, the staffing company, reports that only 54% of employees feel that their efforts are recognized and valued. More concerning is that only 29% of those surveyed feel inspired to do their very best. That means as many as 61% do not feel inspired to do their very best.  The questions is then:  What are they inspired to do?

 

I recently attended an annual CEO Forum in my community were Jack Welch was the key note speaker. In his comments, Welch talked about the importance of a rigorous appraisal process that ensures that everyone in the organization has a clear picture of where they stand.   I was stunned when he asked the audience how many thought they had such a process in place and less than 2% raised their hand.  In this case, I can't help but wonder, how can people know they are doing the right things for the right reasons without effective feedback?

 

Customer and Employee Friendly Processes and Procedures: Efficient processes lead to greater effectiveness and profitability yet, if they're not customer friendly, you can send you customers straight to your competition. And we all know, it's much more expensive to attract new customers than to retain existing customers. It's critical in all organizations that process improvement be an on-going organizational activity.

 

Work is busy and in today's economy, everyone is working really, really hard doing more and more with less and less. That doesn't mean that if you lead an organization or a group of people that you can abdicate your leadership responsibilities. In short, you must keep your eye on the future and chart the course for everyone to follow.

 

Visit www.levelupleadership.com for more information.  

Business Goal Setting and Follow Through

Your business can't go according to plan if you have no plan.

What do you want to achieve this year? More new customers per week? Higher average order amounts? Better customer service ratings? No matter what it is you are shooting for, goal setting is one of the most important things that you will do in the New Year. I've got a few tips to help you get there.

1. Keep it Challenging but Realistic. Any goal that you set for your company should be challenging, but don't over do it. For example, if you had an average order amount of $700 last year, you wouldn't want to set your goal for this year at $3000 per order. Unless you make drastic changes in how your company runs or what you are selling, that goal is just not realistic. You know best what you may be able to achieve in your particular industry, so be honest with yourself and set your goals accordingly.

2. Write Your Goals Down. You may say to yourself on January 1, "I want to get 20 more new customers per week this year." A few months later you will be saying, "Did I say I wanted 20 or 30?" Or more realistically, you have forgotten that you even made that goal. If you have all of your goals written down, you will be able to not only go back and check them, but you will also be able to go down the list every few months and check to see how many of them you have completed.

3. Assess Your Current Situation: To set goals you have to know where you are right now. In 2003, I wanted to assess our customer service rating, so we sent out a survey to all of our customers on which they could rate us in each department of our operation. That helped us establish our base. Now we send the survey to every customer after every order. This way we can keep track of how we are doing, and if there is ever a hiccup, we can fix it quickly. Don't assume anything. Always assess the current situation before setting a new goal.

4, The key is getting started:  Please take a moment soon to sit down and decide on your goals for the New Year.

Everything is easier when you are working towards a goal. My goal is your success, and I assume that is your goal as well.

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