Intro - Signs your business needs a fresh approach
Starting a new business is exciting and fun, as your business evolves and begins to grow, you find yourself frustrated as this is not exactly the dream you had when you started. Customers get frustrated because you do not deliver on time, your team is blaming each other and rejecting responsibility, you are not sure where your business stands and it is getting more complicated to predict cash flow or sales. You barely have time for yourself and your family, and when you finally find the bed at night - you cannot sleep.
You know that something has to change. You have great ideas, and a great product or service, yet the system is not functioning efficiently. You have some ideas of what needs to be changed, and you may have already tried several approaches, yet the problem is still there.
This is the point you decide you need some expert advice, to create a plan you can trust and measure success.
"No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it." (Albert Einstein)
You and your management team may have hard time to solve the problem from within, as you are too involved in the details and may be biased or lose focus. You are 'in-the-box' and may need someone with a fresh look and experience to help you see things more clearly.
But what is the right service or expert that you need?
Siloed approach
The challenge with choosing the right service to help you get your business on track is that each expert concentrate on a specific aspect of the business.
Business coaches look at your value propositions and aim to help with improving processes and communication. That leaves you still with the challenge to get a supporting system to address your needs, and challenges with customer relations of unhappy customers.
Marketing experts emphasize the need for promoting your business and products or services yet increasing sales just creates more load on your team and more frustrated customers due to poor delivery.
Software companies expect you to define the system you need, and may develop what you have asked for, creating resistance in your team, and making poor requirements as this is not something you know how to do efficiently.
Financial advisor may be able to provide relief in your cash flow but the challenge of delivering quality timely products is still there to handle.
Choosing an expert must take into consideration all the factors that contribute to your current business state as a whole. If you have a medical condition with multiple symptoms - treating the symptoms individually may address the pain but will not solve the problem. The problem may not even be discovered as each expert is dealing with one single aspect of the issue and not connecting it to a single root cause. That may lead to an illusion of feeling better until the condition worsens and you find yourself in a worse state than you have initially started.
Holistic approach
A more holistic approach is needed to identify and address the challenges your business is facing. This approach will identify the interdependencies between each part of your business. Once identified a plan should be developed, specific goals should be set, together with an execution plan and a way to track and improve to assure the plan is yielding the expected results.
In essence, every business has the core principles driving and guiding the mail three pillars - The people, the processes and the products (or services)
Each one of those pillars affects all other pillars and is driven by the vision and core values. If there are challenges with people, processes will not be followed and product quality and delivery will suffer. Challenges with product delivery will create unhappy customers that will affect morale and force process to adjust due to endless emergencies. You get the idea…
A holistic solution will help create focus and identify the vision of the company, its core values and the way those are reflected in each area of the business. A good idea of such an approach could be found in the classic books Good to Great and Start with Why (see reference list)
Then understanding the energy level of the team, what drive the energy together with a review of current processes and data flow, where are the bottlenecks and impediment in the current process and how it affects product delivery.
As part of the solution, the support of technology and systems is crucial, as without the right information and process supporting system, the team will not be able to handle large amount of transactions without mistakes, and you as a business owner will not have the right information available for you to monitor and control your business and make educated business decision.
In the holistic approach the foundational assumption is that you, the business owner, know the answers and have the knowledge to craft the right solution. What is missing is an external team that will coach you through the discovery process and help build the right plan that is tailored specifically for your business. Such team will not only be able to help you create a plan, but also implement the plan. A team that will be highly familiar with your business and be able to develop or revise the right software systems to support the operations of your business.
Finding a team that could provide holistic business solution is not a simple task, and in most cases requires a significant investment, which as a small business you may not have available. However, a company that is geared towards small businesses not only going to charge you a reasonable amount, but also experienced in helping small businesses like yours.
The core of the solution relies on three foundational frameworks:
Entrepreneurial Operating System - Developed by Gino Wickman and is aimed to provide proven and simple methodology to run a small business efficiently.
Energy Leadership - A coaching methodology developed by Bruce Schneider, the founder of iPEC aimed to elevate the energy level of your team, get them engaged and thus more productive and happy.
Domain Drive Design (Erik Evans) / Clean Architecture (Uncle Bob) - A software development framework that puts the business needs at the focal point of the development process, and get the business closer to the development team.
XiriuS is a company the specialized in providing holistic solutions to small business
To learn more about holistic business solutions, visit xirius.com
References:
Leadership:
Energy Leadership (Bruce Schneider)
Leaders eat last
Whale done
The leadership challenge
The five levels of leadership
The mind of a leader
The five dysfunctions of a team
Management (Peter Drucker)
Process:
Get a grip
Traction
Technology
Domain Driven Design
The Goal
Clean Architecture, Uncle Bob
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