Do you want to grow your business big and strong, but isn’t it going quite as fast as you would like? You may have tapped into the right market and have set up the right business model, but if your staff and other aspects of your business aren’t organized, you’re slowing yourself down.
Organizing your staff and business should be part of your growth plan. This will help you set up a scalable business that, in times of growth, grows the right way. No rash decisions being made, no oversized workloads for your staff, and your company culture and current customers won’t have to suffer: that’s what a future-proof business is all about.
Why Organization Is Crucial for Growth?
Many companies work towards growth, but when it starts happening, they are caught off guard. Their employees can barely handle the extra workload, increasing waiting time for their customers, and slowing down other processes.
That kind of growth will not steer you in the right direction, and even do more harm than good in the long run—you’ve got a reputation to uphold for your employees and your target market.
The most successful companies are built in a way that prepares them for growth. Don’t get me wrong: they don’t have employees sitting around waiting for new customers or pay too much for systems or space they don’t use yet.
Instead, they are flexible and able to act fast. They have structured processes and procedures, which helps them free up time for important tasks, and automation helps them even more.
They are also built on a foundation of growth culture. The vision of the business is communicated clearly—and everyone is on board.
The way the organization is structured and how workflows are set up lets everyone do what they do best. No talent or time is lost, and communication is paramount.
If you have all that, and of course, a healthy business and market, you’ve got all the ingredients for growth. Ready to start cooking?
9 Ways to Organize Your Staff and Grow Your Business
So, if overall growth is on your list of to-do things, here are 9 ways to organize your staff and grow your business. Keep reading for learn how to get your team organized and ready for the next step.
1. Set up a clear company vision
2. Nourish a growth culture
3. Give your staff have the tools they need
4. Help your staff to understand their roles
5. Empower people to make decisions
6. Measure the metrics
7. Make sure your staff get the training they need
8. Make sure you’re setting up the right process
9. Monitor performance and revise if needed
1. Set up a Clear Company Vision
It all starts with a vision and soaking your entire organization in it.
Clarity is your friend. Your business vision is the blueprint for how your business is going to grow, and it should take into account where you want to go and how you want to get there.
Think about what kind of company you want to grow into. Not in terms of numbers and revenue, but also in what type of employer and influencer you want to be in your market. What difference would you like to be making to local communities, minority groups, or the world as a whole? Formulate a holistic growth vision that leaves nothing up to chance.
2. Nourish a Growth Culture
Time to communicate that ambitious vision and growth plan to your workforce. Knowing the long-term goals of their company will help people understand their role in the bigger picture. It also works as a great motivator, because they know what they do will affect your growth—or slow it down.
Another part of nourishing a growth culture is allowing people to experiment and make mistakes. After all, learning from failures is the secret recipe to doing things better, right?
Last but not least, top off your growth culture with complete transparency. If you want to have an organized and engaged workforce, let them see what is going on inside other parts of the organization than just their own. This will show them what impact their actions have, which will also improve communications between departments.
3. Give Your Staff Have the Tools They Need
Having a clear business vision and a clear understanding of what your business stands for is helpful, but it’s nothing without the tools that will help you get there. Whether that’s having the right software or a tool to help staff find what they need, it’s important to make sure your staff has the skills they need to get the job done.
Sit down with them and ask them what would make their jobs easier, and allow them to test out a few tools before you settle on one.
This could be a CRM system that helps you get sales, marketing, finance, and customer service aligned, so they don’t waste more time on sending client information back and forth.
It could also be a new communication tool like Slack if you are still working with emails, cc’s, and paper airplanes.
Tools like Piktochart will give your employees access to all kinds of templates, for instance, to create timelines. No more freestyling and everyone creating documents their way: you’ll finally have unity and peace of mind.
Another thing that could be worth investing in, is a project management tool. That will give everyone a clear overview of the status of a project, stakeholders, and deadlines.
But the most important part is to not decide for your staff what would be best—unless you are actively working alongside them. To be confident of your decision, talk to them to find out what they are missing. This could also mean they deem some tools they currently use as useless or time-consuming, so do be prepared to make changes.
4. Help Your Staff to Understand Their Roles
As you’re planning for the future, it’s important to help your staff understand their roles and what they need to do in order to help you grow. This will help them to feel valued and to know where their strengths lie.
Start by defining accountabilities and responsibilities. Basically, write a new and updated job description for everyone, as if you’d be hiring a new person to do their job. What is expected from you on a daily basis? What skills and resources will you be using?
Overtime or in the onboarding process, these things can become unclear and lines get blurred. Your employees forget who is officially responsible for what, and spend a lot of time finding the right person for the job.
Make it clear who’s in charge in what situation, and communicate this openly. That way, everyone knows their own job, but also those of others, to speed up communication.
5. Empower People to Make Decisions
Growth requires thinking and acting fast. If you want to be quick on your feet, it’s time to work with a chainsaw on your line of command. Not literally, of course.
In many organizations, employees have to ask someone else for advice or approval for certain actions. While occasionally that’s simply necessary, it shouldn’t be the standard. It will create a constant back and forth, even if people already know they will get a certain approval for something, based on their experience or knowledge.
That’s what you hired them for, their experience and knowledge. So take away the unnecessary requests and ‘’I’ll have to ask my manager’’ conversations, and empower your employees to take control of their jobs.
This will speed up processes big time, which both you and your customers will reap the benefits of.
Another big benefit of this approach, is that you teach your employees to be better every day so that one day they will be ready for a manager role—because when your business grows, why shouldn’t they?
This kind of ownership is what helps people become more engaged and enthusiastic at work, which you will only get advantages from.
6. Measure the Right Metrics
If you’re not measuring any KPIs at all, this is your sign to start doing it—but the right way.
Performance indicators should be used to motivate people and help them structure their to-do’s. They aren’t a way to make punishments easier.
That’s why you should be defining and choosing your KPIs well. Link them to metrics that are relevant to your company’s growth, but also to the personal growth of your employees.
Working with KPIs like that helps you focus more on the output and less on the input. Hours spent behind a desk mean way less than actual deals and productivity goals met.
7. Make Sure Your Staff Get the Training They Need
Everyone needs to be at the right level to do their job effectively. If you’re not sure how to help your staff feel confident and able to do their jobs, talk to your team and find out what they need.
Make personal growth plans part of your reorganization, and allow employees to choose the training they find relevant to their own goals as well.
Remember: you can’t grow your business if your employees don’t grow with it.
8. Make Sure You’re Setting up the Right Processes
A business that’s slow to grow is usually a result of inefficient processes, and they can be tough to change. If you’re struggling, it’s probably a sign that you need to think about how you’re doing things.
What can be automated? Let’s start there. There are plenty of SaaS solutions and other tools out there that take the busy work away from you and will let you focus on what really matters.
9. Monitor Performance and Revise if Needed
How’s everyone doing? Ask that question frequently, and really listen. Check-in regularly on the progress of employees, teams, and projects, and ask if they see room for improvement.