In no particular order, the results of my recent survey indicated a lot of employee frustration out there in the Small-Medium sized privately owned business market. Companies which ran perfectly well up to a certain level of sales, completely fail when attempting to expand.
While simple to fix, many just fail because of the simple-minded (or stubborn) nature of the business owner. Sometimes it's the children of the original owner that assumes control. What worked as a small business, could not possibly work as growth continues. Often the owner is not adequately trained or educated to maintain this control and is reluctant to yield. Proper procedures and processes, human resource policies and quality control processes are essential, but often neglected. It's easy to listen to 1 or 2 people. It's easy to manage a few people, but 50 employees or 100 employees or more require a management team - the operative word being "team".
The entrepreneurial spirit that once existed, may now be focused exclusively on money - making more money at any cost. The result is a dictatorial, micro-managed company. Product quality suffers, customers complain, employees leave.
- It costs 5 times more to obtain a new customer than it does to retain an existing Customer
- 96% of Customers who are not treated with respect never return
- Unsatisfied customers rarely complain, they just leave
The top 10 surefire ways to wind down your business:
- Lie to your employees
- Lie to your lawyer
- Lie to your banker
- Flatten a great Org Chart [make everyone report to you]
- Employ uneducated/unqualified family members
- Take extravagant vacations disguised as business trips, while telling employees times are tough
- Don't listen to your top talent, humiliate them
- Don't pay suppliers
- Don't pay the government
- Listen only to Confucius
Do you have any other? I'd like to hear about them from you.
So, what can you do to recover from this abysmal situation? Well for one thing, if you are the owner, wake up! If you have hired good people, recognize that the reason you may have hired them was to supplement what you could not do. You hired them based on their education, experience and expertise specifically for the position you posted. Let them do their job!
If they have already left, then rebuild your team. Surround yourself with people smarter than yourself specifically in areas for which you are not strong.
Treat employees as if each is special. Treat them as you would like to be treated.
Take a serious look at your business and prepare a solid business plan. Make sure you have a grueling 100 day plan as part of or separate from the business plan. Depending on the state of the company, re-branding may be necessary to add that fresh, new look to the company.
The plan must be signed off by Legal, Finance, Engineering, Marketing and all the members of your senior management team. Share the plan with your banker and seek their advice.
Sustained growth is the vision of one, but the effort of many.
Conduct a state of the union address and present the plan to your employees. Gain consensus. Reward positive contributions.
What next? Follow the plan! Just Follow the plan!
Terry Fagen, entrepreneur and founder of FirstQuintile Information Technologies has lived through many of the experiences he describes. What they never taught me in school, I have learned in a real-life MBA experience spanning more that 20 years in various businesses. What better way to help others, than by showing proof of what works and what does not work.
FirstQuintile is a digital communications company specializing in engineer-quality Web Sites, eCommerce - B2B and B2C websites, Web design, development and maintenance, Digital Marketing, SEO campaign creation and execution, software development and engineering consulting. FirstQuintile provides full-service technical & interactive marketing communications, pr, copy-writing, trade-shows, engineering, product and project management, strategic analysis, creative web and online advertising.
More information can be found at http://www.FirstQuintile.com.
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