When you began your small business you likely studied the barriers to entry. You needed to know what factors could hinder your success so that you could determine a strategy to overcome them. Now that your business is established you have some barriers to success that you may not have considered. As any parent will tell you, it’s difficult to get others to do things exactly as you would do them. Making tasks easier to complete can go a long way towards encouraging your employees to make the best choices.
If you’ve been following our blog for awhile you know that we’re big advocates of process mapping. If you have completed a process map for your business you’re likely well aware of the barriers you face. You should be able to clearly see the areas within your business where slowdowns occur. Hopefully you have been available to identify the areas where employees are struggling to complete tasks the way you do them. These are the areas you need to address and find ways to make these tasks easier for your employees to complete. If you are unfamiliar with process mapping, click the link above to get started.
Once you know which areas need the most attention you can start searching for solutions. Remember the goal is to make jobs easier. Resist the urge to choose solutions that offer multiple complicated features. If the new way is harder and more confusing than the old way you have increased your barrier instead of removing it. If you need some ideas to get you started check out our post on technology for your small business. From there you can link to individual articles within the series to get all the details. Look for ways to make jobs more enjoyable. It’s human nature, we all prefer to do tasks that we find fun and put off the things that we dread doing. Finding ways to make tasks fun will encourage your employees to jump in and get them done.
If you want to grow your small business you need to be consistently succeeding at your present level. Taking on more before you’ve conquered your current challenges is a recipe for disaster. It’s just like mastering a new skill. You wouldn’t try to pop a wheelie before you could comfortably ride a bike. You don’t strap on skates and immediately try skating backwards on one foot, you master the basics and then tackle the more intricate tricks. Once you are consistently exceeding expectations within your small business you can set your sights on new goals and start working towards them.
Keep in mind that you need to add things slowly. Don’t make several drastic changes all at once. If you’d like to try a new marketing campaign and add some new product lines, choose which of these strategies you’d like to implement first. Take some time to establish the new initiative and assess the effectiveness before you begin the next objective. It’s easy to get caught up in the excitement of trying new and different things, but if you can exercise some restraint and patience you’ll see much better results. Plus, if one of your initiatives is less than successful you’ll easily be able to tell which one it was so that you can continue with the successful strategy and only revamp the one that needs work.
Barriers will keep your business from succeeding. Removing them will open up avenues to success. We hope these tips will help you devise a strategy that will keep your business growing.
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