Change is challenging for everyone, and when you’re changing up a familiar IT system for something new, a lot of your people are apt to feel lost, and may even be resistant. In order to get everyone on the same page, you need to make them part of the process so that they can see from a holistic perspective the problem you’re trying to solve. How do you help them understand why change is necessary, [...]
Smart leadership is crucial to any business going through the series of peaks and valleys I call the Business Storm Cycle; the Tornado of rapid growth and expansion, followed by the Avalanche period of fast deceleration, which is followed by the consolidation phase. Without a steady hand at the helm, even the best employees can become burned out and dispirited – and the company may flounder, or even fail. Jim Crane is a good example [...]
Once you have your processes and people where they need to be, your next step should be to define what technology you have and what you need. Just remember there are no magic bullets that will do all the work for you. IT is the backbone—but people and processes are the muscles and bloodstream. Each aspect of IT will need to go through an assessment. This lets you see where you have gaps and where [...]
For smooth operating, your IT department has to be professionalized, with policies and procedures to follow and standard operating procedures. While professionalizing your team, you want to focus on desktops instead of individuals; in other words, it’s the role, not the person that will keep everything running efficiently. If the role is well-defined and well-documented, processes will continue to move smoothly, without gaps, hesitations, or blockages. You achieve this by implementing a PMO—a project management [...]
So – you’ve hit the hard wall of slowdown we call Consolidation. You’ve gone through the heady, wild sales spike and rapid growth of the Tornado, and suddenly you’ve stalled. Sales are down, and you’re not making your margins – not even close. Now what? This is not the time to point fingers and blame people for whatever brought your Tornado to an end. No one did anything wrong. Everything you are experiencing is a [...]
Mistakes happen when you’re learning to ride out the ever-changing business cycle. In fact, most startup companies and divisions make the same ones. In the new product or acquisition phase, many departments get scant resources and little attention; unless they are doing something that actively hinders the growth product, they’re mostly ignored. This makes the people in those areas feel sidelined and left out. Resources and people may have been taken away from their departments [...]
With a title like that, you may be asking, “Is this going to be an adventure story?” Well, yes - and no. The kind of Avalanche I’m talking about doesn’t involve snow; it’s part of the life cycle of your business, but it can be nearly as overwhelming if you’re not ready for it. You’ve started a company, gone through the growing pains, and you’ve enjoyed a boom as your product or service took off [...]
Thinking in terms of cycles is a way human beings make sense out of life. Cycle Theory can be applied to just about every natural, social and historical concept there is, from world power cycles to international relations cycles to sociological and psychological cycles. What all these cycles have in common is that they form a circle that goes around and around, carried forward by a natural, ceaseless momentum - and they’re not easy to [...]
Habit is a powerful thing. That can be a good thing—but not always. In the house where my family used to live, there was a counter on the left side of a double sink. When my mother washed the dishes, she washed them in the right-hand sink, rinsed them in the left-hand sink, and put them in the drainer on the counter to the left of the sink. If we’d had a dishwasher, it would [...]
So – you dropped a bundle on the newest cutting-edge software that the salesperson assured you was the magic bullet to solve all of your problems – yet costs are still going up, and processes are still bad. How could this be? You’ve got the best possible technology! As a company administrator, you can see there’s a problem, but you don’t understand what’s causing it – because you haven’t considered the other two factors, people [...]