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Category - Systems and Procedures

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1
Organise Your Staff Before You Have Any!
2
The Product Development Process
3
How to SWOT!
4
Systematise Your Business

Organise Your Staff Before You Have Any!

All small businesses start in a very similar way, and I’ll bet you can relate to this story.

So, Joe and Joan start their small business just by themselves. They did most things jointly – did the sales, ordered stock, stuffed the shelves, wrote parts of their website, kept the books, opened every morning and closed every evening. Then they hired a store helper, Sue. She was really keen and helpful, she mucked in and helped to do everything as well. But things were starting to get missed because they got confused about who was going to do what.

Then, one day, they ran out of stock.

“I thought you were going to do that?” asked Joe of Sue.

“No, I was busy that day, but Joan heard we needed to do it so I thought she was going to.”

“Oh no,” Joan says, “Joe always does that on Thursdays.”

Growing small businesses grow organically. They hire staff as and when they need them. But unless you get organised, things could fall between the cracks no matter how helpful and willing everyone is. Organisation means you know exactly who does what, how they do it and when, and who does it as a temporary replacement under certain, set, circumstances.

That way, there is no confusion.

Watch this video on how to organise your staff before you even have any.

That makes sense doesn’t it? Organise your business so it doesn’t fall into confusion by designing it from the start.

Draw up your “Organisation Chart” or picture of the positions (not persons) who will end up in the business when it is fully grown. Design the units or departments, or just areas of responsibility such as sales and marketing, books and administration, stocks and warehouse. Prepare Job Descriptions for each of the positions noting specifically what they are responsible for, how they are to be measured, and who they report to.

Like most small businesses, even with this Organisation Chart, you the owner will start off doing everything. Take that opportunity to write down procedures for all the tasks each position has to be responsible for.

Then, as you expand and hire people, you have ready a Job Description and a tested routine that you can just hand over.

As usual, the best happens after the story! Get over to the website teikoh.com and tell me what your experiences are about this idea. While you’re there, subscribe and I’ll send you more free tips, tools and resources every week to help you create great strategy, show leadership, and grow your business.

 

The Product Development Process

So, you have a new idea for a new product or a new service, and you’re really excited about it. Well done you!

The question is how do you go from new idea to development and launch?

If you’ve been following me, you’ll know that I’m all about systematising processes. My career has come to today, where I have used all my experience and training – over 35 plus years of working with entrepreneurs and small businesses – to use existing proven methodologies and create simple to use systems for my clients. There’s no need for you to read loads of books and “try” theories – I’ve done it for you.

Which means I have a system for developing and launching a new product or service! It’s one of 55 really useful management tools that I have collated into my book called “The Management Toolbox” available from Amazon.

The Product Development Process is a 6 step process that begins generating the idea and ends (if the steps have been successfully hurdled) with the product launch.

In the video below I’ll take you through the Product development Process.

Let’s summarise those steps:-

  1. Generate the idea;
  2. Test the concept;
  3. Design it;
  4. Product test;
  5. Market test; and
  6. Product launch.

And remember, this is important – the steps are hurdles, each a test of the validity of the original idea.

Go to my website to get more free systems and resources available for download at teikoh.com.

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How to SWOT!

I’ll bet you that you’ve heard of the term “SWOT”.

In the English-based education system that sometimes describes someone who works “too hard”! But no in this context I mean the management tool that people use to analyse a given situation or business issue.

“SWOT” stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats, and the idea is that you assess your business situation or issue by looking at what its strengths and weaknesses are, and what opportunities exist or threats that it faces.

Many people misuse this tool – they take a generic view of the situation and look widely at all the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Often they even misunderstand the difference between strengths and weaknesses as opposed to opportunities and threats.

No, as a tool its use is to focus on key issues so that you can make clear decisions and not get swamped by too much information.

In this video I explain how you can use it to provide focus, and eventually identify strategies from the analysis.

There you are, how to use SWOT properly as a management analysis tool!

And remember, use the strengths, fix the weaknesses, exploit opportunities, monitor threats.

Now, the fun really starts when we “talk” about how you use or might use this tool. Click here to leave a comment under the video and tell me 2 ways you have used or will use SWOT!

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Systematise Your Business

As busy entrepreneurs, what we all want in our businesses (and in our lives!) is efficiency, right?

You want to be able to do your usual processes quickly and efficiently, and because you do them day in and day out memorising every step, you probably do. But what happens if someone has to take over for you – perhaps when you have a day off? Or what happens when you expand and have to start hiring staff, or take on VA’s and contractors?

I’ll tell you what happens – it all slows down! Disturbingly this means you can never leave the business, not even for a holiday!

Other people don’t live inside your memory so they take longer to work out what to do, perhaps even do things in the wrong order and have to come back and do it again. Okay, so you train them – you take them through the steps, and yet….they get it wrong! They can’t remember everything they are told – you wouldn’t either if your weren’t living it day in and day out!

This week’s discussion is about how to systematise your business – treat it as if you were a one-branch franchise and organise procedures and process manuals!

Your standard processes are just that – standard – so why not write them down, video yourself doing them, and make these records the basis of how you train your staff?

I’d love to hear from you – please go to the blog by clicking here and leave a comment – how have you scaled your business by proceduralising it?

Now, standard processes and procedures creating efficiency is only one way of running a great business:-

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