Transforming Business
Seven Keys to Business Success
Timothy Stagich, Ph.D.
Success in the world of business requires much more than a preoccupation with profits. In order to build organizations that are self-sustaining in good times and bad business leaders must learn to move beyond their focus on profits. This means working to build greater quality and productivity into the everyday efforts of running a business through improved collaborative leadership, teamwork, and customer service. In recent years there has been far too much reliance on financial manipulation to squeeze as much profit as possible out of a business without a clear strategy for building the organization, developing employees and improving customer service. Cost cutting, when necessary during rough periods in the market, is not enough to sustain organizations and help them grow over time. And, laying-off employees is always a last resort to maintain viability in an uncertain marketplace. Therefore, a greater focused effort is necessary to transform a business organization into a dynamic synergistic force with the ability to adapt, build and change itself during the inevitable marketplace fluctuations.
The first key to success is the ability to provide collaborative leadership and vision for your organization. This means developing a vision and meaningful mission for your business and helping your employees to understand and connect with this mission in a way that will improve both them and your organization. Also, collaborating with your staff, employees, directors and supervisors builds a sense of teamwork and understanding of each person’s role in helping to make the business a success and run the organization more efficiently. The biggest failure of business management is their inability to see the special roles and contributions of each employee and to help them understand and function in their roles successfully (See Collaborative Leadership).
Far too much time is spent with top-down communication through memoranda and reports without any real sense of the team effort necessary to get the job done. Regular feedback in an open system of communication where each employee understands their role and feels free enough to express their points of view often results in discovering better ways to do business and improve products or services. This communication and teamwork are the next keys to business success. Also, this team approach gives employees a better feeling of contribution and connection with the organization, management and the quality of products or services. This ability to connect with the organization gives employees greater meaning, sense of purpose and commitment to the mission of the company or business. It also humanizes the organization in a way that is becoming more essential in an over-mechanized society. And, most importantly, this collaborative sense of teamwork will improve efficiency over time as employees are more connected and take greater pride in the quality of their products or services.
The next key to success in transforming your business is to work each day to build customer confidence in your business. Far too many businesses are working to squeeze every ounce of profit out of their customer base as they sacrifice the long term belief and confidence of consumers in their products or services. Price gouging and taking advantage of customer loyalty hurts more than helps the long term profitability and sustainability of business. Studies show that most customers who have had bad experiences with companies seldom return to do business. So, what may be gained by short term profitability will be lost over time if customers feel they have been used. In fact, many customers will choose to stay with businesses when they understand the reasons for rate and price hikes. Helping customers to find a home with your business requires providing satisfaction based upon a sustained effort to meet consumer needs in a changing business environment. Developing fair market value, reasonable discounts and, most importantly, providing quality products or services are the best tools to keep customers confident in doing business with you well into the future.
Also, a consistent effort to recognize and address the needs of your customers and employees through improved employee development and marketing efforts are the next keys to business success. Improved collaborative communication and teamwork will enable you to problem solve, identify and bring out the best in each of your employees through on the job training and development. And, as they learn to communicate and work better with each other, they will be learning from each other about the changing needs of consumers and how to work successfully with customers and clients to generate new business, build partnerships and gain increasing respect and confidence from them. In a successful collaborative environment everyone is part of the team that is able to work together for the improvement of the business and each other. High synergy collaborative employees are the most successful employees because they recognize that their success emanates from helping others to succeed. Those employees who make everyone around them better are the best employees and help to build organizations that are self-sustaining, creative, more productive and adaptive to the constantly changing needs of the consumer and the marketplace.
Finally, collaborative employees and managers have the creativity to develop new ideas that will enable your business to adapt to the changing needs of consumers, discover new markets, and produce the innovation and quality products and services that best address them. Groups of employees who have learned to work well together in a collaborative way are able to brainstorm, work through problems and arrive at creative and practical solutions that are best for everyone in the long term. Building sustainability and creativity into your business organization is a collaborative group effort that brings out the best in every employee. Collaborative groups build a learning environment that facilitates participation, problem solving, creativity and adaptability at the highest levels. This increased level of performance will enable your business to sustain itself, grow consistently and become more productive in an ever-changing market.
Note: The above article is based on the ideas and concepts found in the book, Collaborative Leadership and Global Transformation by Timothy Stagich, Ph.D.
- Why have financial manipulation and cost-cutting been so widely used in the past to generate profits? Why is there a tendency for many businesses to rely on these techniques? Discuss the problems with these techniques for the long term.
- What are the most important areas to be addressed in improving the productivity of business organizations? Why are profitable businesses not necessarily productive and what are the implications of this for long term economic viability?
- How do Collaborative Leadership and Vision build more productive organizations? How is performance improved through collaboration?
- Discuss the importance and benefits of developing an organizational mission for your business?
- How do collaborative communication and teamwork connect employees to the mission and purpose of the organization or business?
- How does collaboration and teamwork improve the motivation and commitment of employees? How do they make employees better problem solvers?
- Discuss how collaborative teamwork improves employee development, marketing and customer service. How does it build consumer confidence?
- How do collaborative employees help each other to succeed and how does this process build more productive organizations?
- How do collaborative learning and teamwork build creativity into organizations? Why are collaborative organizations and businesses more innovative?
- Discuss the relationship among collaboration, problem
solving and creativity. How do they work together to build quality
products and services?
