Last month you heard a lot of talk about gratitude. November is a big month to give thanks for the gifts in your life. Appreciating the good things in your personal life is great, but turning that positive reflectivity to your small business can produce a ripple effect of benefits that will carry your business to the next level.
We’ve talked a lot about process mapping in the past. If you missed that series click here for an introduction. Often we talk about process mapping we focus on identifying the problem areas within your business. The bottlenecks, the things that you should be doing better. Today, we’re looking at things a bit differently. As you’re thinking about your business focus on the things that you do really well. Those tasks that you look forward to, the projects that you know your employees will handle successfully in an efficient manner. Not only will taking a moment to appreciate these wins feel great, it can also provide valuable insight into ways to improve other areas of your business and ideas on which areas you should focus on expanding your efforts. When you think about the things within your business that you’re grateful for divide them into categories; projects and people.
Those project wins are likely your business strengths. These can be great areas to focus your growth strategy on. The things that you do well with minimal effort are probably your competitive advantage. Growing your business in these areas will be a natural fit and therefore less difficult and stressful. There are always growing pains and challenges but if you are playing to your strengths you’ll adapt quicker and have an easier time rising to the challenge.
As you identify the people that provide the most wins on a consistent basis you may start to see ways to improve other areas of your business by reassigning some tasks to those employees that will be most adept at handling them. If you start to realize that you have a real superstar that isn’t being given enough opportunities to shine you can offer them opportunities for growth. This can help with employee satisfaction and retention and provide numerous business benefits.
Continuing to focus on the positive can be contagious. When you’re happy you tend to smile more and have more patience. This can improve employee morale. Encourage your employees to talk about the things at work that make them the happiest. Not only will this help you identify the parts of their job that they enjoy most, it can guide you in the right direction when it comes to offering them new challenges. Happy employees work harder, call in sick less and are more likely to stay with your company. Not only that, happy employees often translate into happy customers as well.
Process Mapping and Our Simple Online Inventory Solution: Two Things Worth Being Thankful for
As you process map and look for ways to grow and improve your small business, don’t forget your inventory. Stockpile is the perfect simple online inventory solution for your small business. Our fully customizable, mobile compatible solution is available for FREE, so what have got to lose? Headaches? Inventory issues? Yes! Get Stockpile today and you’ll have something to be grateful for tomorrow!
