Year-end – Time to Reboot Your Business?
To be more successful, what should you do?
When your computer or printer “hangs” or gets stuck, you quickly reboot to get it back on track.
In business, it’s not as easy to “reboot.” You can’t just turn your business off and on and have all the systems automatically refresh for optimum performance.
Still, “rebooting” works as a metaphor for positioning your company for greater success – by eliminating clogs and refreshing your business.
Eliminating Clogs:
Just because you’ve always done business in a certain way doesn’t mean that the process can’t be improved.
Change is never easy. Deciding what to change is complicated because you don’t want to disrupt your business operations. Implementing the change is even more complicated – since you have to continue to run the business while the new processes or systems become operational.
In making changes to streamline your operations, it’s important to focus on key changes and invest significant energy in the implementation. Many change efforts fail because the complexity of the implementation was underestimated.
Refreshing:
Just like a walk in the woods refreshes your mind – rebooting should refresh your business perspective. Whether you call it formal strategic planning or operational planning, it’s important to take time out and get perspective.
Sometimes it’s healthy to decide what you will stop doing so that you free up resources to pursue more profitable business.
Improving profits by expanding or raising prices seem like obvious choices. But, is it the right choice for your business? In deciding what new initiatives to start, it’s important to focus on value in the eyes of the customer.
It’s interesting to observe the current wave of acquisitions, as law firms merge to become national and international mega-firms, with billing rates in NYC and Boston of $1000 per hour. Obviously, they think this growth will make them more successful. But it’s not obvious that bigger law firms provide better service more cost effectively. In fact, it can be just the opposite from the customer perspective. Unless there’s real value added from the customers’ point of view, it won’t be long before we see waves of downsizing and collapse of mega-firms that lost focus on serving customer needs.
Reboot Your Business?
Year-end is a great time to reflect on what’s made your business successful and what needs improvement. To help companies do a quick reboot, I have developed a half-day workshop that helps you to assess your current situation, clarify the “value” that your business provides in the eyes of your customers, articulate your strengths and weaknesses relative to the competition, and identify next steps.
This interactive workshop works well for a Board of Directors meeting, senior staff meeting or one-on-one consultations. Please call or email if you are interested in scheduling or finding out more about the workshop.
About the author:
Jean D. Sifleet, Esq. CPA is the head of the Business Practice Group. For practical information, check out Jean's articles and books which are featured on this site. For legal advice related to your business, contact Jean at 508-361-0916 or jean@smartfast.com
e-News Subscribe:
To subscribe, please fill out the form below.
