Step 1 in Learning the 10 essential steps to organize your business is to "Gather Business Information".
Whether you are a manager of a unit or a business owner, all the business leaders want to make their company structured, focused & decluttered. At the end, you want to lead the company to growth and profitability.
Why does army source all possible vital information before planning any operation?
Information could be about the field, the opponent, the weather, the area and all sort of available piece of information.
This is a ‘must’ to avoid any potential failures.
As a business leader, you must get all important information on your table. Remember this is the first step towards organizing your business for growth and profitability.
So, get the following,
- Organizational diagram showing the organization structure, departments, the key people, number of employees in each department. (General Manager or Department Head is the right person to do this for respective departments)
- Process flow diagram within each depart (To be done by operations manager and reviewed by GM/HOD)
- Generate the employee list with their roles, responsibilities and key deliverables. (HR Manager to keep this updated always)
- Collect all the available reports & MIS (management information) already in use.
- Interview people or representatives from every functional area. Purpose is to assess their knowledge about organizational goals, jobs they deliver, their own capabilities, their difficulties, suggestions. ‘It is the leg, who knows where the shoe bites. (Do this yourself along with HR).
- Collect past performance details of your company. Account statement, sales figures, material purchase, customer feedback are some among the details. If possible, do a market research and competitor study. (Accounts department must have this).
Note: If you really get into this work and study the details, I guarantee that, you will open a totally different perspective about your business and its operations. More importantly, the way forward!
What I learned from situations
From Manager to CEO, I took charge of business units or companies more than a dozen times (now as consultant, I interact with many). In every assignment I did this information gathering job. I discovered that people fall into three categories everywhere I went.
- Around 20% of them are highly focused and dedicated. They work without guidance and are responsible for the performance.
- 60% are mediocre. When proper leadership given, they are productive, otherwise directionless.
- Remaining 20% are totally detached from the business operations. Many of them even don’t have the clarity on their job requirement.
Do not think that people in the second and third categories are difficult. They are not to be held responsible. Companies could missed right people deployment based on organizational goals and employee deliverables.
During your personal interviews with employees from all kind of backgrounds in the company, many common and repetitive points are going to be raised by most of them. This will be a good cut section of the ‘urgent’ and ‘important’ areas that require your attention.
