Coaching

Environment

The first step is to Design an environment for your business that will ensure your business

• will be enjoyable for you to work in
• will attract the staff that you will enjoy working with
• will attract staff that will enjoy working for you
• will attract clients that will love what you do and you will love working with.

Most businesses have an environment or culture that has evolved on its own without any conscious input from the owner and is generally not in alignment with the business owners long term objectives and goals.  Sometimes we fluke it but most of the time this culture and environment create all sorts of problems in your business.  It doesn’t need to be this way and taking back control of your business environment is a key first step in getting your business working for you.

The 3 key areas that Business owners fail at in setting up a great environment are

• They are not clear on what their long term objectives for their business are
• They do not understand their business values
• They do not Define what sort of environment they want in your business.

Structure

Once you have clearly articulated and designed the Environment of your business you then need to look at the structure and systems that you need to have in your business that are going to support your environment.  A lot of business owners miss a lot of this because, well for most people it is boring.  We want to get in and start making the money and doing the activity.  Inevitably it all falls down because the business just does not have the structures in place to support the dreams, desires, promises of the business owner.

So what are we talking about when we say the structure of the business. 

• Organisational charts
• Documented benchmarks of success that we are looking to achieve?
• What do we need to measure, When?, By whom?. How is it used? What decisions are made from these measures?
• What do we need to make it easy to run the systems?
• Flow charts and processes
• Operations manuals

Implementation

Once the environment and the structure are put into place on a consistent basis, you can move to implementation.  This is the Implementation or what you do on a daily basis.

Systems should be recommended, developed and implemented by each person responsible for that area, rather than waiting for someone else to tell them what to do.

Nothing should be in "someone’s head", but documented.  Once it is done once, it should be designed as a system for the future.

Systems are the actual implementation of the structure. It’s what’s done, when and how and how it is documented for ongoing improvement.

• How is the policy implemented?
• How is its implementation monitored, measured and compared to best practice?
• Who does this?
• How is this documented?
• How is feedback on its implementation carried out?
• What is done with the feedback? How is this used to improve moving forward?
• How are the people in the team included in the process of improvement?
• How is the KPI implemented?

People

This is where a lot of businesses have problems and they believe it is a people problem.  The truth is it is very hard to hold the people in an organisation accountable until the Environment, Structure and Implementation areas of the business are done well.  Once there is the environment and the structure in place to enable people to design and improve systems, & people know exactly what is expected of them, then it is the person who can be held accountable for and be responsible for the achievement of required outcomes.

You can’t tell someone to improve their performance if they don’t have the leader who encourages achievement. Nor if they don’t have the blueprint for what is wanted. Nor if the task they are focused on is not measured accurately so they can’t track their progress.

This is why we work through any business is a structured way to identify the gaps in it.  We liken it to a doctor who prescribes Panadol for a headache.  If the cause of the headache is a brain tumour than the Panadol is only going to provide short term relief.  The issue is the brain tumour and that needs to be dealt with not the pain that occurs as a result of the tumour. 

Selecting the right staff to match the organisation is also critical.  Employing a candidate based purely on experience and technical ability is a common mistake and often causes cultural problems within an organisation.  It is much better to hire the right personality and attitude for a business and we spend a lot of time helping business owners getting this right.

When a team member is repeatedly told – as in, weekly or even daily – what’s required and they continue to fail to comply, they can tend to 'deselect' themselves from the role.