Welcome to Amanda’s semi-regular blog, where she writes about how to improve business profitability
Do you have a team of sherpas?
One of the challenges of growing a business is ensuring that the staff you employ are as productive as you used to be when you were delivering the products or services. I know when I used to run a software company, we were never as productive once I stopped writing code. There are so many reasons why this might be the case, and one of these lies in the engagement of the people in the business.
The impact of price
An often overlooked lever in productivity is price. The measure of productivity is a value (£), so price plays an important part. Productivity is not the same as efficiency.
What promise do you make?
Any business that has ever traded, will be known for something. Often, they are not known for the right thing. Your promise is at the heart of everything you do as a business. It is why people pay you; a form of contract, explicit or implied, that describes what you are going to deliver. If you live up to that promise, consistently, you will be loved, if you fail, it will result in unhappy customers, staff and suppliers.
Are you a pyramid, a frustum or an irregular polyhedron?
The most productive companies understand their economic engine as Jim Collins refers to it, and have it turning faster and faster. Those running them can make decisions quickly and are energised by their businesses rather than shackled by it.
What's distracting you?
Distraction is a state. Things that distract, divide our attention or prevent our concentration. The word itself has its roots in latin – ‘distractus’ meaning to draw apart. We humans have been suffering distraction for centuries, the word itself dating back to 1350-1400 in Middle England.
Visual Stories Drive Change
I believe we can drive organisational change faster if we harness the power of visual stories.
