Santa’s allegedly the busiest person at this time of year, but even kids know that he has a large number of little helpers, the reindeer know what to do, and he’s on holiday for 90% of the year – now that’s a business that runs itself!
For those businesses that slow down over the Christmas period, December and early January is often the only time the owners can take stock and spend some time working on the business, rather than just in it.
Wouldn’t you rather take as many holidays as Santa? In two articles – this one and another in the New Year – I’m going to offer you some helpful suggestions that you can action this year that will begin the process of making your business run itself more effectively. Start this project now, and you won’t have to wait another year for a holiday!
Go AWOL
Take a two-week vacation without checking in with the office. If all hell breaks loose in your absence, you will have a clear indication of where you need to make changes. Should your staff really need so much guidance from you? How can you capture the standard actions they should be able to perform daily without your input? Do you need documentation? A system? Some software? A new staff member or a better trained existing one?
Download your brain
From today, write down at least one process per month. The task of documenting every little thing that happens in your business over a year is too overwhelming to do at once, especially if it’s all still only in your head. One or two per month, as you perform that action, is easy. If you have a key staff member who also holds a lot of processes in their head, make it one of their KPIs to do the same.
Pass the buck
If you are still the main, or only, point of contact for a lot of your customers and suppliers, take an afternoon to look through your contact lists and decide which relationships you can pass on to someone else in the company. If the records of the relationship are in your head, write them down – in fact, start a relationships file for both customers and suppliers.
Breed your product
Take a day to look at your existing products and services and brainstorm with your team about how to create recurring revenue streams from them, such as service contracts that are paid monthly, annual memberships that give customers access to special deals or services, or even simple automatic reordering systems that your customers can opt into and review annually.
Let’s face it, nothing really gets up to speed again until after Australia Day, so you’ve got a good month to have a go at some of these. Use this year’s break well and you shouldn’t have to wait for next Christmas for your next a break.
