Familiarity breeds contempt...
Familiarity is used especially in the expression familiarity breeds contempt to say that if you know a person or situation very well, you can easily lose respect for that person or become careless in that situation.
This situation is all too common in the workplace.
Ad-hoc solutions and run-and-gun problem solving finds solutions, for now, but eventually boils your team down into a pile of frustration as the wheels constantly spin 3 times as hard to solve a problem that should be simple.
A loss of respect for the job and the task is surely to bestow itself as your team becomes familiar with a lack of direction and order.
These business inefficiencies (or as we call them, BizX’s) can creep into all departments like a silent stalker, and come manifest anywhere at any time. The problem with BizX’s is that the pattern forms this vicious cycle of rinse and repeat.
You and your team will be in an infinite loop of low productivity if these silent stalkers aren’t caught, which leads to an unmotivated team that has high work dissatisfaction (and we know where that ends up in the long run).
Take some hard facts from research firm IDC: they’ve concluded that companies lose 20 to 30 per cent in revenue every year due to inefficiencies.
Here’s a list of the most common roadblocks that all businesses must been keen to identify to avoid the death spell of inefficiencies:
1. Department Silos
When the departments within a business have minimal dependencies to each other, it’s natural for vertical barriers (called ‘department silos’) to be constructed like iron walls.
Sooner or later these pose a risk to the cohesiveness from within and cause massive disruption, leading to a feeling of tension and poor cohesiveness.
The solution – encourage openness and transparency by streamlining all communications between everyone in the organization. This promotes a strong culture that is healthy and pure, while putting a halt on department silos. Positive lines of communication are key to having all team members feel engaged and involved.
2. Crappy Processes and Systems
Most businesses employ a big mix of systems and tools to conduct operations every day.
A lot of these solutions run on software that is disconnected so the solutions that come about are all over the place, making it hard for you and your team to stay on top of tasks and routine duties.
As a result, employee disconnect starts to find its way in and less efficiency is created.
With a lack of standardized tools, your team has to work within a range of different applications to complete their responsibilities, resulting in delays, errors and stymying productivity.
The solution – look for tools or applications that can be customized to the many different processes your business has.
Software should work around your business, not the other way around. And at a fair price.
Adapting to new technologies and innovation are key to working smarter and recouping expensive manpower that can be directed to more important tasks that software can’t do.
Plus, if the software solutions you chose are built right, they’ll be easy-to-use and intuitive which decreases your team’s onboarding time, while immediately providing a boost in sales/revenue.
3. Duplication and Redundancy
A consistent problem found in most businesses is the duplication of effort required by several people to accomplish a task that is capable of being done by one. This introduces the opportunity for errors, team tension, animosity among a host of other problems.
Repetitive steps also burn your team out and decrease the quality of the output. When processes are not clearly laid out with black-and-white clarity, expect ambiguity in accountability.
The solution – Work out your key processes into SOPs (standard operating procedures). Include your team in this process to encourage collaboration and inclusivity. Once defined, it’s much simpler to define key tasks, hold everyone accountable and track progress.
4. Lack of Business Direction
Business leaders who don’t have the accurate business data or information are incapable of steering the ship in the right direction. It’s like flying a plane with a blindfold.
What follows is a series of knee jerk business decisions that flip flop the organization in all kinds of directions with results that continue to remain subpar. Even worse, your team grows frustrated with the indecisions and starts to breed a bad attitude.
Without optics on how the business is actually performing, you can’t prioritize tasks to execute on and business efficiency slows, consuming business growth and ultimately profits.
The solution – Get more visibility on your marketing, sales and operations. Using a minty marketing & sales platform like Solos can help your revenue pipeline and something like Boombirds for operations is a strong stack to get your organization harmonized and running at full potential.
5. Lack of Strategic Focus
Many entrepreneurs and businesses alike struggle without a deep understanding of all their business layers. Therefore, it’s extremely common that they fail to locate and destroy critical weaknesses, which leaves lots to be desired on the companies profitability.
A lack of razor sharp business processes leads to increased business risk, loss of top-management trust and stunted business growth.
Not measuring true performance against hard business milestones and goals can sink a business fast and lead to the worst case (ceased operations).
The solution – Get all departments firing at 100% on the correct software platforms.
This includes sales, marketing, operations, finance and any others that are present. Having the functional tools seamlessly integrated will help overcome roadblocks, keep everyone on course and help define your business’s growth path.
Teams will understand their roles in reaching the company’s vision and it’ll introduce accountability. It’ll help everyone squash all weaknesses through learning and growth.
Given how fast the World works these days, it’s important your organization does everything possible to exceed the precision and speed of your competitors.
