I am not a scientist but with my basic knowledge in science, I understand that the human body is a complex system with several parts of the body working in sync to ensure that a person stays alive and healthy. Businesses are considered as living entities because they are supposed to be built to run by themselves with little or no interference from owners.
Building a sustainable business requires building a robust business system to ensure the business operates effectively at a low cost. As a business grows, the owner(s) must make sure that the business is operated in a way that the operations does not revolve around them. Unfortunately, most businesses are built to survive only when the owner or visionary is actively involved. This has led to the collapse of several businesses after their owners pass on or are unavailable for a short while.
The importance of building a business that goes several years running without the active involvement of the owner is foreign to many. The good news is that, having sustainable business systems in place relieves the owner of the several burdens of running a business and creates room for succession and continuity.
For a business to work efficiently, existing businesses should do a restructuring whilst new businesses try to put up some important structures for easier running of the business. Businesses can implement the following steps to restructure or build sustainable business systems for business growth.
- Business Performance Evaluation: The first thing to do in the process of restructuring is to evaluate the current performance of the business. Some of the metrics to be evaluated include the business’ financial goals and how it is currently being met, customer expectations, internal processes including how a business is run daily and the ability of the business to learn and grow (innovation) among others.
- Develop a Mission and Vision Statement for the business: If your business does not have a clear mission and vision statement, now is the time to develop one to determine the purpose for the business’ existence. One importance of having a clear mission and vision statement is that employees know exactly what the business stands for and are able to work with one specific goal in mind to achieve it.
- Set up a winning business team: Develop a guideline and system for recruiting talent to attract people with the best skills and expertise that suit your business and employ such people to run your business with you.
- Clearly define your business work flow processes: Every business has certain processes it uses to run its daily activities. It is important to set up and document the processes used in the day to day running of the business and assign appropriate departments or staffs to each task to ensure smooth operations without overlap or redundancy.
- Develop a problem-solving process: Businesses face problems each day. Document the processes used in solving business problems as they occur to avoid going back to finding solutions for the same problem multiple times especially if different employees are involved.
- Develop an information management system: Information management is key to the efficient running of every business. How information flows from management to employees to customers ensure understanding and collaboration between all stakeholders involved. How will information be disseminated in your business organization? Who will be responsible for communicating what information? Have these clearly documented and make it available to the appropriate parties involved.
- Finally, put together a list of required regulations for running your business including licenses, permits and documentations and be sure to get all those in place to avoid getting into problems with authorities or regulatory bodies.
Having all these processes and documents in place gives businesses the ability to operate sustainably without requiring the consistent involvement of the owner(s).
Click here to learn more about our business structuring and systemization service or hire a consultant to run a diagnosis on your business and help restructure it for sustainability and growth.
