mavSolve

Wow, do I remember how to write?

A lot has been going on.   We have a new president and he has been very busy.  The new year has brought with it a premonition of “bad things to come”.  What should we be doing?

We should be getting more efficient.  We, as business owners, operators, leaders and managers should be looking to eliminate waste in a systematic way.  We should take the foreboding as an opportunity to step back, get our “ducks in a row” and plan for increased opportunity.

I see a lot of companies doing layoffs.  They are doing blanket RIFs, allowing middle level managers to make the decision on who stays and who goes.  It’s like cutting off your nose to spite your face.  How should they decide who stays and goes?  What have they done to understand the inefficiencies in their organizations?  In a word, nothing (in most cases).  Now, they are continuing into the blind with fewer resources, and, potentially, the wrong ones.  Companies that survive this, well, they are probably already looking at their business for efficiency on a daily basis.

Most of these companies responded to a major “top-line” event by adding staff and resources without having a plan for scaling their business.  As such, they don’t have clear visibility into business operations.   They need the ability to understand current operations intimately in order to begin to forecast for the future.

Even though we hear companies talking about Lean, they are too far in the weeds to really be lean.  How do the executives of the company make decisions regarding supply-chain, inventory holding, distribution, pricing discounts?   Well, they make them reactively in most companies.  When inventory becomes high, they post a sale, which then skews forecasting for the next year, based on deliveries from the current.  This becomes a vicious cycle.  This is only one simple example of the issues with not having a proper “management operating system”.   Business leaders need a daily dashboard of the efficacy of every portion of their business.  That includes such things as marketing and advertising ROI, production efficiency, distribution efficiency, etc…  With such an understanding of current operations, the ability to forecast and plan comes to the forefront.   Then, business’ could be making strategic decisions on how to shift, or retire, their resources.

So, what should we be doing?  Executives should be looking now to bring in resources who can get them back on track to efficiency and profitability.  We have the most amazing workforce in the world, the men with the ideas to put it to work, and the capital to fund and operate.   Let’s put our resources back to work by finding true efficiencies in operation to increase margin and maintain superiority in our industries.  You, Mr. CEO/President/GM should be looking for help from outside your organization (hire consultants) to analyze your business with a plan for increasing efficiencies instead of  bulk laying off a workforce.   Make sure you aren’t compounding the mistakes which got you “here” in the first place.

P.S.  mavSolve inc is available for engagements to build better visibility into your current and future business.