Tune Your Business
We have been engaged by many clients who are falling into a slow death spiral. Most of these companies share one or more of three traits that contribute to underperformance and eventual irrelevance in the marketplace.
Reinforcing Failure. Almost every company has failing product lines and strategies. Amazingly, resources will continue to flow into the failures instead of the products and ideas that are working. Maybe the CEO is convinced the marketplace is wrong. Maybe adopting the better strategy the unpaid intern came up with threatens somebody or perhaps because it worked in 1988 and you’re convinced it will work again. Allocate resources to what is working. Have no sacred cows.
Toxic Ted or Trudy. Everybody knows who they are in your office — the person who controls productivity and morale according to their whims and moods. Typically there is some personal tragedy they hold over coworkers (stolen by Gypsy’s) that prevent them from being kicked to the curb where they belong. They are often the least productive employee which is a good thing as their repeated mistakes cost a fortune. Pulling the trigger and terminating this person can have a dramatic effect on the quality of your employees work experience and bottom line. If you don’t have the heart to fire them then pay them to stay home. You’ll still be ahead.
Failure to Adapt. Business changes at an alarming pace. If your culture is insular you will eventually fail. The HR folks obsess over employee turnover. If you have zero turnovers you are in essence saying all your employees possess every possible work skill they could need for the constant upheavals that are modern commerce. Companies can debate for months about modifying products or strategies. Let the marketplace decide. Offer it in blue, add another button. The marketplace will tell you if you are on the right track. Two things almost always prevail in the marketplace, choice and speed. One client had a wide variety of custom products they could produce within 48 hours. They would produce the order but not ship it until two weeks later. Why? They thought customers would come to expect fast shipment and two weeks was the “industry standard”. Two weeks of cash flow gone and their key competitive advantage of fast, flexible production surrendered.