So you are trying to figure out ways to grow your business. Throwing things at the wall and seeing what might work. Kudos to you for making efforts to get better and grow. But watch for allowing all of the additions without shutting down some of the things that can go.
You can get mired down in all of the changes. Are you tracking which ones work? Shutting down the ones that don’t work so well? Did you add so many that you cannot separate the good from the bad?
Here are some tips to help:
- Have a way of tracking if something works BEFORE you implement it. And make sure someone does that analysis.
- When something new seems to work, review the old things and see what can go.
- Put fresh eyes on it. Take yourself out of the “box” and think “What advice would I give to someone presenting MY business processes to me?”
- Look at all reports, processes and tasks and review them all. Do a “must have”, “nice to have”, “can live without” assessment and see what you can eliminate or combine. (Often areas create their own reports and don’t realize other areas create the same report).
- Work with your IT department to automate reporting. Often code can be written to make minor changes (like dates) and programs can often be scheduled to run as soon as updated data is available. This frees up time for human hands to do analysis. And IT may like the new system efficiencies.
- Do a work study. Are there tasks/ processes that no longer create something useful? Is anything outdated and simply forgotten about?
- Check your Tech. Are there new systems, modifications, tools that could speed up work?
- Consider hiring an outside person to look at all of it for you. The Information Tamer takes the “addiction” to tasks out of the picture.
Most importantly, recognize the workload of your people. Every report/ task can take them away from focusing on improving the business. Letting them get bogged down in several items that are being done, “just because we always have” can result in frustration, overload and mistakes. Getting rid of something does not mean it was never relevant, it just means things have changed.
