This is a question that most business owners want to know the answer to. Your success will be based on a lot of factors such as hard work, great strategies, positive attitudes, and strong leadership but there is also a recipe that can be followed when you are creating and building your businesses that works for your individual personality and goals. At EBS we break a business into 4 key areas and we work in each of these areas to ensure they are in alignment with each other and you. These areas are explained below:
The first step is to Design an environment for your business that will ensure your business
Most businesses have an environment or culture that has evolved on its own without any conscious input from the owner and is generally not in alignment with the business owners long term objectives and goals. Sometimes we fluke it but most of the time this culture and environment create all sorts of problems in your business. It doesn’t need to be this way and taking back control of your business environment is a key first step in getting your business working for you.
The 3 key areas that Business owners fail at in setting up a great environment are
Once you have clearly articulated and designed the Environment of your business you then need to look at the structure and systems that you need to have in your business that are going to support your environment. A lot of business owners miss a lot of this because, well for most people it is boring. We want to get in and start making the money and doing the activity. Inevitably it all falls down because the business just does not have the structures in place to support the dreams, desires, promises of the business owner.
So what are we talking about when we say the structure of the business.
Once the environment and the structure are put into place on a consistent basis, you can move to implementation. This is the Implementation or what you do on a daily basis.
Systems should be recommended, developed and implemented by each person responsible for that area, rather than waiting for someone else to tell them what to do.
Nothing should be in “someone’s head”, but documented. Once it is done once, it should be designed as a system for the future.
Systems are the actual implementation of the structure. It’s what’s done, when and how and how it is documented for ongoing improvement.
This is where a lot of businesses have problems and they believe it is a people problem. The truth is it is very hard to hold the people in an organisation accountable until the Environment, Structure and Implementation areas of the business are done well. Once there is the environment and the structure in place to enable people to design and improve systems, & people know exactly what is expected of them, then it is the person who can be held accountable for and be responsible for the achievement of required outcomes.
You can’t tell someone to improve their performance if they don’t have the leader who encourages achievement. Nor if they don’t have the blueprint for what is wanted. Nor if the task they are focused on is not measured accurately so they can’t track their progress.
This is why we work through any business is a structured way to identify the gaps in it. We liken it to a doctor who prescribes Panadol for a headache. If the cause of the headache is a brain tumour than the Panadol is only going to provide short term relief. The issue is the brain tumour and that needs to be dealt with not the pain that occurs as a result of the tumour.
Selecting the right staff to match the organisation is also critical. Employing a candidate based purely on experience and technical ability is a common mistake and often causes cultural problems within an organisation. It is much better to hire the right personality and attitude for a business and we spend a lot of time helping business owners getting this right.
When a team member is repeatedly told – as in, weekly or even daily – what’s required and they continue to fail to comply, they can tend to ‘deselect’ themselves from the role.
If you need guidance to grow your business or if you are planning to Buy or Sell your business
