If your business has gone through a period of rapid growth, then I’m sure it felt great at the time. Pretty soon though, all the added responsibility and factors to consider may have started taking its toll. With this kind of stress piling on, many business owners will start to lose their grip, and end up letting their business become disorganised. Upping your profit margins in a competitive niche is hard, I know. However, letting your organisation slip spells nothing but trouble. Here’s why…
First of all, if you don’t stay on top of keeping your business organised, you’ll run the risk of losing your important data. From financial records to your customer’s personal data, you probably deal with all kinds of information that’s essential to keep your business ticking. If you’re not organising this data in a manageable, practical way, it can be a severe crutch to the future growth of your operation. I remember reading an article which said that people in white-collar jobs spend a quarter of their time searching for information they need to do their jobs. Whether this is true or not, time is money, and time spent faffing around with files is time that could be spent pushing your business onto the next big goal. Take a look at the way you’re handling your data, and think of ways it could be improved. It may be a smart move to invest in a new digital asset management system.
Another big risk is that your customers’ experience will start to suffer, and you’ll start losing them to your competitors. We’ve all been in the following scenario at least once. You call up a company with a fairly simple question, and end up being passed around from department to department, talking to people who have no clue how to answer your query. After having this kind of experience, would you go back to the business in question? I didn’t think so! When a business can’t deal with a simple issue like this, it’s usually the sign of a disorganised structure. Good customer service is essential to the success of a business, no matter the size or industry. If you let yours get too disorganised, the customer’s experience will start to diminish, and you’ll start losing them faster than you can bring them in.
Your customers may not be the only people you lose if you let your company become too disorganised. You’ll also run the risk of some of your best employees leaving the company to find a more professional organisation. Few people want to work under a boss with poor organisational skills, least of all true professionals who are chasing their dream careers. At one point in time, staff may have run around behind a disorganised manager, cleaning up after their mistakes out of loyalty, or fear that they’d lose their job. These days however, professional roles have become a lot more accessible, and you can’t expect your employees to be so subservient. Your staff will already be under strain from their workloads in a growing business, so you can’t expect them to pick up the slack that comes from your disorganisation. Even if you’re pretty disciplined as a boss, your managers could be a different story. Have a walk around the office, and pay attention to how organised your higher-ups are in managing the employees who work under them. You might get a nasty surprise!
If you let your business become too disorganised, you’ll also be pushed towards using a scattergun approach to innovation. If you’re constantly searching for this or that file, or cleaning up organisational mistakes, it leaves you very little time for doing research into your specific niche. This is essential if you want to remain competitive in the modern arena. Panicking, many CEOs will take an approach to innovation that can be likened to the scattered blast of a shotgun. By this, I mean you’ll be flinging your time and resources at all kinds of different ideas, and hoping that one of them will lead to healthier profit margins. What you should be doing is taking the time to do proper research, narrow down on a sure winner, and hitting it straight away. Some management consultants call this the “sniper rifle” approach. Re-organise your business, and you’ll have much more time for pinning down the very best ideas, setting clear and productive goals, and then hitting them on the head.
If you’re worried about your firm suffering from these problems, consider an overhaul today!
