When a business is growing, it can be hard to keep up with the workload, which can negatively impact service quality.
Vancouver business coach Mark Wardell, founder of Wardell Professional Development, offers four tools in CGA Magazine that can help any business achieve sustained growth.
Business manual
It houses your strategies, your policies, your systems, and any other information you need to run your firm with cognizance. Not only will this manual help smooth out the daily management of your firm, it will also give everyone involved peace of mind that things are being done according to a plan.
Employee manual
A good employee manual should serve double duty as both a job description/orientation tool and an ongoing training manual. It should show your people not only what is expected of them, but how to do it. When you create this manual, your goal should be to make the process of bringing in new employees as smooth as possible and to educate and empower them to take ownership of their work.
Analysis manual
An analysis manual will record all the relevant numbers concerning the status of your firm’s growth. If growth is important to you, this is where you’ll track your progress. Certainly this manual includes your financial statements, but those aren’t the only numbers that are important. You may want to track the amount of overtime your employees are putting in per month, or the number of new clients being brought in, and how. Take time to identify the indicators you would most like to monitor, and begin tracking them on a monthly basis.
Also, don’t be afraid to share the results with your employees. Involving them in this way will help motivate them to reach the weekly or monthly goals needed to ensure you grow profitably.
Business calendar
A business calendar is a simple, yet effective tool for tracking the annual cycles of activity within your firm. There may be times of the year when you want to review your budgets, consider growth, hold employee reviews. If your goal is to grow profitably, it’s important to organize these priorities so they don’t fall through the cracks. Planning in this way also encourages you to continue to think strategically about your firm as a business, which is critical for achieving your goals over the long haul.
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