Ensure your team is focused heading into the new year
A common issue we see with many privately owned businesses is they are trying to do too much. They have lots of ideas for things they’d like to work on, but they are missing two vital considerations. The first is they haven’t linked which of the things they want to work on will actually build the long-term value, or what we call the company worth, of the business. This could lead to your team working hard but confusing motion for progress. This leads to initiatives that may be nice to have but are they truly of strategic value to the enterprise.
The second issue we find is just the sheer volume of too many actions initiatives being worked on. This leads to the team many times not accomplishing many of them, and/or not accomplishing them well. When this occurs, the team gets frustrated and this then creates its own set of issues.
Setting the initiatives that your team should work on should flow in the following way:
- What do I need to build or accomplish long-term with my business that will make it attractive to a future investor or acquirer, identifying the value drivers. (such as building an exciting growth path and sales pipeline, having a plan for strong profits/cash flow, developing unique intellectual property and competitively unique capabilities, building a strong team, etc)
- Once you have #1 in place, you identify where does your company have gaps in delivering on the value drivers. What are the initiatives my team should work on to fill any gaps we have between where we are today and where we want to be in the future in terms of company worth.
- Once the gaps are identified, then establish which initiatives that need work will require cross functional or cross-department resources. You want to avoid having your functional departments each having so many initiatives they need to work on that they don’t have time to commit resources to supporting cross functional department initiatives. So any gaps your company has that require cross functional resources to address, these should get priority. These initiatives are oftentimes of more strategic importance to the company.
- Once you see what resources will be required by each department in supporting company-wide growth or improvement initiatives, you can then see what resources are available to work on improvements at the department level. These department level initiatives are often times more tactical in their importance to the company.
Meet with your team and discuss these four points. In addition, assess the past year and what you accomplished and why and then discuss what wasn’t accomplished and why. The learnings from this can be applied to helping set the focus for the year ahead. As the leader of your business, ensure your team is excited to be working on the initiatives you’ve identified, not frustrated by them because it’s another year of trying to do too much. Driving the right focus will get you on your path to your future euphoric exit event.
