How to Be More Efficient

Are You Doing the Right Things or Simply Doing Things Right?

Is your business efficient? There is an old saying that the last seven words of the human race will be “we’ve always done it this way before”. In a company or organization, it may not be the last words, but once it becomes part of the culture, it can mean big trouble. It may indicate that the company has gotten stale and that it is no longer serving its customers’ needs. Even if these seven words are not heard in your company… when was the last time you took a really hard look at what your company really does and how it does it? If you haven’t, a question that you should be asking yourself is, are we doing the right things or are we simply doing things right?

Companies spend years developing and improving products and services. After making or doing something that long, they usually become very good at it. Their efficiencies and quality get better and better. If that is true, then why aren’t they always selling more of this thing that they do so well? Perhaps it’s because the thing they do so well is the wrong thing. It may have been the right thing at one time, but over the years, as they honed their skills at it, it became the wrong thing. Other newer products and services may have come on the market. Customer’s tastes and needs may have changed. 

Whatever the reason, no matter how well they do something, if it’s not what the customer wants or needs today, then it’s the wrong thing.

Sometimes companies get so good at doing certain things that they start doing more and more of those same types of things. The service provider who has invested in the company and has the ability to handle more and more services begins to offer more and more services. The new services are well received and customers respond. Demand for the older services decreases but they are still offered. The organization now has both newer (stronger) and older (weaker) services. The company becomes like a tree that has so many branches that they begin to actually stunt the growth of the tree. The limited nutrition available to the tree needs to be spread out to every branch and leaf. Instead of a more compact, but strong and healthy tree, the tree is very large but weak. It may now be time to trim the tree.

How to Be More Efficient

Trimming is not always an easy behavior for management to master. Companies have spent years cultivating their products, services, or locations. They have grown attached to them as they nurtured them. Management’s belief has always been that bigger is better. Pruning requires a change in mindset to accept the need to cut back to improve the company’s strength, health, and value.

I was once working with a retail chain that was adding three or four stores every year. There were, however, some underperforming stores in the chain. Some of these were the oldest locations and had the greatest “sentimental” attachment to the owners. They just no longer met customers’ needs and changing shopping habits. It was very difficult convincing the owners that the resources being put into these stores could be much better utilized in their other, better performing stores. These older stores did run very well. Their experienced staff did a great job of serving the customers who shopped in those stores. The problem was that there were just not enough customers. It was truly a case of doing something right but not doing the right thing. The evaluation and pruning process that was undertaken made the company temporarily smaller but much stronger.

Doing things well and continuously improving processes and operations is crucial to continued success. In other words, being efficient will keep you in business. Now, examining what it is that the company that is doing so well and then having the courage to prune some branches before they weaken the entire tree can make all the difference.