An organised approach can head problems off at the pass.
Too many companies have something really bad happen to them. Perhaps it is terrible product quality, the loss of a large customer or a bad employee engagement survey result they never saw coming.
It could even be as simple as having three really poor months in a row, causing cashflow problems.
But many such occurrences can be pre-empted and minimised. The answer is to create some proactive measures and indicators, or pieces of market intelligence that let you know when there is the potential of something bad on the horizon.
Then you can do something about it now – today!
I suggest you take a three-pronged attack to measuring the right things in your business so you can be as successful as possible.
You need to measure what your customers say is important to them. When did you last ask your customers what part of your product or service is the most important to them – the “why” they keep coming back and buying from you?
It is likely your customers buy from you for some reasons you are not aware of and reasons that might even surprise you. Have some focus groups with customers, run a survey or simply pick up the phone and ring 20 of them and ask the same questions of them all.
You will get a clear picture. Then work out how your business can proactively measure if you are on track to deliver those things that customers have deemed to be important that you can react when something goes off target. This way things will never become an issue in the eyes of your customer, as you will have fixed issues before they even notice what might have happened.
You also need to measure business areas where there are problems you would like to solve.
No business is perfect and all have areas for improvement. When did you last make a list of all the things in your business that are not running as smoothly as they should be? Then prioritise and identify what you will do to address these things. Make sure you have a baseline measure from before implementing change.
If your improvements are working there should be a noticeable difference in the key performance indicators you measure around these processes. If not, then you need to go back to the drawing board to come up with new ideas and then test and measure again.
If you do not measure the impact of your changes it is likely you are not going to be performing as well as you could be and you might have a false sense of improvement when the hard statistics are not agreeing with your gut feeling.
Thirdly, you need to measure the business objectives you are trying to achieve. It’s a proven fact that the more you measure how you are going against your goals the higher the potential you have of hitting them.
This needs to be done regularly. The good thing is that if efforts to reach your goals are not going well, you will be well placed to take action to get back on track.
Whilst we do not always reach our objectives in business and life, if you regularly measure your real progress made regularly you will know when you need to change tack.
If you need help analysing your risks and opportunities with some business strategy work, get in touch for some business coaching: zac@businesschanging.com
Zac de Silva is an award-winning business coach who owns www.businesschanging.com and www.accme.co where you can sign up for regular business-thinking questions and build a prioritised action point list. He is co-founder of www.nurturechange.com, the Fiji business retreat in November 2016.
(As published in the Sunday Star Times and Stuff.co.nz, February 7, 2016 – you can read it online here.)
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