Change is hard. 

Getting out of your comfort zone to approach problems in your business is difficult. 

As a CEO you’re always thinking about what’s next for the business.  This thinking gets in the way of making small changes that lead to outcomes of revenue growth, team productivity, and increased brand culture.

Results don’t always require big changes.. Most times, it is the small changes that will have a major impact on your brand in the long run. The most effective innovation is progressive. 

That being said, this process shouldn’t have to scare you. Making small changes will only improve the delivery and performance of your business…

I want to offer you some small changes that helped our clients achieve big results

DOCUMENT PROCESSES

As a business owner, when making decisions, you consider the evidence and not assumptions about your business. The structural integrity of your business is at risk if your considerations are based on assumptions rather than facts.

For this reason, documenting processes increases your business performance and operational agility. Your team can learn by doing.  Also documenting procedures as they are carried out, allows your team to gain new insights from the recorded process. 

Indeed, documenting processes has many benefits including reducing risks and increasing performance. Process documentation serves as a best practice guide on how to execute new processes, as well as how to enhance current ones.

Over time, having written processes will provide you with a clear idea of what to improve and what to adjust in order to grow your business. Proven data will provide you with insights that you may not have considered before.

You can start by documenting just a department in your organization and work your way through it all. Learning by doing, will give you the best knowledge on how to best document your processes in your business. A template will help you get started and allow all your processes to have the same look and feel.

Benefits of having processes in your business include:

• Increased reliability and consistency
• Improves efficiency
• Reduces risks, flaws, and costs

PRIORITIZE PROJECTS & TASKS

As a CEO, you might have a million things going on in your business and it can be hard to focus just on one. 

Knowing how to prioritize your activities is critical when working on a project or task. Prioritization ensures that you can effectively manage your time and meet any deadlines you and your team have set. This reduces project delays and assists you in achieving your professional objectives.

Before jumping into this process, you have to identify what matters most for the business right now and you should have a clear understanding of how to evaluate the importance of each project. 

Generating a checklist of the criteria to vet project priority will help you evaluate projects in the future… You can make a list of projects and run through the checklist. Based on their priority each project will have a final score. Place the projects in order of highest priority at the top of your list to make sure that you and your team finish them first. 

Benefits of prioritizing tasks and projects include:

• Enhance motivation that produces high-quality work
• Decrease the number of unimportant projects that save time and money
• A better understanding of what matters most with your business goals

HAVE A DEFINED OWNER OF OBJECTIVES

Successful implementation is what determines your business’s success, whether it’s in terms of projects, processes, or reaching a specific goal.

Having a defined owner of your objectives is critical to the success of your business.  As CEO you can not be all things, nor should you try to be.  There comes a point when you need to bring on team members that will take full ownership of the project & objectives in your business.

As the owner of the objective, it will be up to them to get to the end goal.  As the CEO it is on you to provide the mission and values as guidance for how they will implement a solution to reach the goal.

Having documented processes and prioritized projects will support your team in staying focused on the current objectives at hand.

Having a team that takes ownership of business objectives will not only benefit the company but your team as well. It will boost their productivity and provide results over time. After successful implementation, you will have the ability to evaluate, measure, compare, and test the results of the plans. 

Benefits of having a defined owner of objective:

• It provides you with a broad overview of your company
• It reduces costs and improves business performance
• It fosters a sense of mutual trust and confidence

Small changes should not hold you back from reaching your full potential as a business. Modifying some aspects of your company will simply provide you with a better grasp of what has to be done to achieve your objectives. Documenting processes, prioritizing tasks, and having defined ownership of systems are just some powerful examples of what you can start doing today to improve your business in the long run.