Background story
*Shawn’s IT had been in business for over 14 years. He had experienced significant highs with contracts to provide IT services to High Schools in the neighbourhood he grew up in, in Mpumalanga.
He swiftly began delivering the services, but soon after execution, things between him and his co-directors started taking a turn for the worse. Each person had a different view of how the money should be spent.
Upon reflecting on the pros and cons, and as the person whose idea this business primarily was, he bought out his partners and soon became the sole shareholder and director of the business.
As the only person left in the organization, he could not do as much work by himself as he did with a big team. It also meant that the business did not make enough money to pay for its running costs.
So, Shawn decided to get a job and work on his business part-time. In a matter of 3 years, he picked up momentum again and then hired two assistants to help him while he was at work.
The problem:
The problems started because he had been the only person in the business. His team didn’t always know how to deal with some client problems. At times, they escalated everything to him, which meant their turnaround times to clients were getting longer.
Queries were not getting resolved as quickly and because the technical issues got out of hand, there was no one there to work on business development. The business was not growing in the direction that he had wanted, and he had no way to determine what to measure.
He started forcing team meetings once a week for the team to highlight recurring and unresolved issues.
The problems persisted despite his efforts to curb them. He wasn’t sure if he was measuring the right things. While he could see everyone was busy, he often wondered if they were busy doing actual work or “fake work”.
That’s when he contacted us to conduct a review of his business and provide recommendations on the priority areas that he and the team should be working on.
The solution:
We held our first meeting with Shawn alone and got his understanding of the problem. Then held a meeting with him and his team to understand what they felt were the real issues.
Upon our analysis of Shawn’s business, we devised a way forward and focused on areas to help him see results that could be measured in a short space of time. He accepted our proposal and we got to work in guiding him and his staff on best practices and improved the way they worked.
In no time, it was clear what was meant to happen in the business. Employees gained their confidence in the work they were meant to do as well as taking ownership of their tasks.
The business began running smoothly, and Shawn spent less time worrying and putting out fires which got him to focus on the strategic aspects of his business such as his sales pipeline and how to grow his business in the coming years.
The team grew and with a bigger team, the tasks were shared more evenly and there was a clear purpose they were all working towards.
Conclusion
Business owners tend to go through similar experiences where business growth is concerned. In this case study, the business had owners who did not appear to share the same or similar values or even vision for their business.
This is a serious problem and can leave members of the management team feeling despondent or seeking to no longer support the future growth plans of the organization. When the culture does not allow for honest discussions about the future, the next best thing to do is to part ways as progress will be difficult to identify or even arrive at.
Where growth is concerned from an operations perspective, it’s important to remember that people need systems. By systems, I’m not referring to automation and tech, but a way of doing things that is standardized and communicated thoroughly to everyone.
Lastly, “fake work” vs real work is a contentious topic. Real work is work that results in sales, so this is for example emailing your profile, applying to be a service provider, cold calling, and delivering the product or service to a customer.
Fake work is work we do that can’t easily be quantified, it takes a lot of our time but doesn’t lead to increased sales of our product or service. Some of this fake work can be unintentionally built into our processes.
A good example is when you send an email to a service provider and they send the first email acknowledging your email, then 24 hours later they send another email stating their SLA turnaround times (still no solution). Then 24 hours after that they send an email asking you to please clarify what it is that you need. At this point, you’re certain that you want to cancel your subscription with them because what on earth!
The above are a few of the problems we solve for our clients if you’re wondering whether we can solve your problem for you. Do not hesitate to contact us for a short consultation.
*This case study is based on real-life events although the names have been edited to protect the privacy of the individuals concerned.
