Small business consulting can show the impact of business culture on your organization

One of the most overlooked opportunities in small to medium-sized businesses is the impact of their organizational structure and business culture. Typically, organizational structures evolve in small businesses without consideration to the future. This is not too surprising because most businesses are focused on the short-term. Unfortunately, what results is a major hurdle when they decide that, “Jill is retiring at the end of the year and now what?” Additionally, there is often collateral damage occurring through the organization that goes relatively undetected.

Another major misstep is to draw an organizational chart and then force fit the people on your team into it. This always results in negative impacts.

The key to success is to develop a hybrid organizational chart that blends both the structural and accountability needs with the talent levels within the team. One of the biggest challenges of many organizations is talent assessment from an unbiased skillset perspective. The tools available are numerous and not always appropriate for across the board evaluations. We have all heard how some company gives everyone a DISC assessment or Meyers-Briggs, or Strength Finder, etc. The team at EOS® prescribes to a GWC assessment (get it, want it, capacity for it). Read more about EOS® in the book Traction. The truth is what to use depends on what you want to achieve from the testing.

SPC Consulting helps you identify what would be most appropriate for your needs. While succession planning is something that should be evaluated and considered every single day of the year, the fact is most give no thought to it. Why? Simply, it has no immediate impact on this month’s results. Think of it like being interviewed every day for the next job up.

Annual next person up meetings.

Have you ever been blindsided by a sudden departure? Did you ever wonder how could this have happened? You may not like the answer. In most cases, people do not feel appreciated or valued to some extent. When was the last time you sat and asked what does your management team want personally and are they satisfied with the role they are playing? I thought so. Every organization has voids in it. Why not use those to your advantage by allowing interested team members to take on additional task in those areas they are interested in?

Accountability in the organization is one of the most frustrating aspects to management and employees alike. So, why is it so hard?

Because it also includes you. No one wants to be held accountable especially not in a public setting like at work.  Trick is, though, we tend to set people unknowingly up for failure. How so? We tell them they are responsible for a ten percent growth in sales. However, they do not control marketing and have a limited travel/expense budget and no control over pricing. So, they have been burdened without empowerment to make the changes to excel at the task and exceed the goal. Creating goals is important but there must be buy in. The question might be how can we achieve a ten percent growth in sales? If the team comes up with a plan that works financially you now have a real goal given those agreements.

Organizational communication is nonexistent in many companies. What is organizational communication?

Focused intentional discussions on why the organization is designed the way it is and how it is supposed to work. This can cause all kinds of problems like the ones in the following scenario.

• Manufacturing approaches engineering to eliminate a feature that is rarely ordered but can be an add-on. The logic is that is adds significant cost. The change is made and a month later sales discovers the product feature is gone and now they have numerous customers who are upset. It turns out that most do not buy the option up front but add it later to navigate internal purchasing guidelines or use it only at certain times. Now everything is a mess.
  • Had the awareness been there it could have been addressed by asking sales and engineering, “How can we include this feature and achieve a significant profit given the difficulty of the process to make it?”