Small Business Survival and Growth
By Enrique Bekerman
As your business grows beyond its start-up phase, you may need to bring new people on board with varied skill sets. This is the ideal time to start building the culture that will ensure the survival of the firm for future generations. Developing a participatory culture is the first step in acting like the bigger players without losing the flexibility and agility that have allowed you to compete successfully thus far.
At this critical stage, companies need to develop a mission, values, and objectives that can be clearly understood by all team members and will guide their behavior.These values and objectives need to become a part of every day life at the organization, not something that is reviewed once a year and forgotten about in the daily life of the organization.
You may want to dust off your original business plan and bring it up-to-date.The mission statement should reveal the company's aspiration of securing a place in this world: how would it like to be seen by others, what markets it plans to serve and what position within this market would be appropriate, etc.
The values, of course, should reflect the values of the founders that have thus far made the firm successful. However, as new people have come into the organization you should include shared values that already exist and make your firm what it is today and what it should be in the future. This may require a little introspection and brainstorming in order to put into words those qualities that already exist. A day or two away from distractions seems to work best for most teams, so a location away from the office is best.
Objectives should provide an ongoing road map to fulfill the company's mission. Annual goals should be formulated to contribute to these longer term objectives. These goals should then be reviewed frequently individually and by the team.
As you look back at your past successes what has been the key element? Somewhere along the line you have obtained the agreement of someone to give you money in exchange for your products or services. This typical customer must have been happy with what you have delivered and has come back many times. If so, you must agree then that keeping this typical customer happy should be crucial to your mission.
Customer satisfaction is seen today as a necessary ingredient for enterprise success. Yet such customer satisfaction may not be totally sufficient to guarantee customer loyalty as your customers could derive equal satisfaction from your competition (perhaps at a lower cost). You must build your goals by taking into account the customer's needs and wants whether these are spoken or unspoken.
Taking into account your strengths and weaknesses against those of your competition helps keep the process focused on the customer. Recognize that customer wants and needs are not static. By going beyond mere satisfaction and delighting your customers you could create new needs and wants that may keep you ahead of the competition and earn your customer's loyalty.
As you can see, this is a never ending process. As you satisfy your customer needs, you must continue to improve your business so that you can continue to earn your customer's loyalty. This is accomplished by:
1) adopting this continuous improvement philosophy as part of the company'ss daily life,
2) applying consistency to your products and services,
3) operating in a genuine participatory teamwork environment,
4) training and developing every member of the team with the purpose of making continuous improvement part of the organization's culture and
5) using measurements and analysis of those operations that are critical to the delivery of quality products and services.
GROWTH AND SURVIVAL PROCESS:
MISSION - VALUES - OBJECTIVES -ACCOMPLISHMENTS- GOALS
Enrique Bekerman is Principal of Quality Manufacturing Associates
Phone: 1-954-346-4474 www.webuildqualitytogether.com
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