Implementing processes is crucial as Lucy’s wedding planning business continues to grow. Flexible procedures help her adapt to changes and improve her service as she innovates. With these in place, she will have time to focus on finding new clients and providing excellent service.
It takes a balance of strengthening the fundamental, proven workflows while leaving room for innovation and creativity as you continue to grow.
The agony of the writer. I am not the first to write about this and certainly not the last. But alas, I will try to render my personal experiences and inspire something positive out of this profoundly uncomfortable feeling.
I’m in the middle of editing my business book, which is an exploration of what I have learned about building a business – it is, in essence, the business handbook I wish I had had when I started as an entrepreneur. I thought the writing process was going to be the hardest part, and editing the book would be a breeze. I would only have to hire a great professional, and the rest would sort itself out.
If your product is built right for your client, they will come. More often than not, it will work out as you envisioned.
Setting an initiative up for success takes time, as it is not something that happens automatically. The great thing about time investment is that it does pay off. Similar to compounding interest with invested money, putting in the time to ensure a project will launch smoothly will help you reach your end goal and guarantees that it continues working efficiently in the future.
Say you are interested in starting a blog for the company and your goal by the end of the year is to have three months of blogs uploaded on your site ahead of time. Perhaps you want to set up a monthly accounting process at the company that is performed accurately and on time with minimal managerial intervention. These are both possible goals to have. Although they may not be easy, all it takes is an investment of time and effort.
Even with processes up and running in your business, you will still sometimes run into problems. Perhaps a newsletter did not go out on the date it was supposed to, or a report has missing information. It is impossible to foresee and document every single possibility in your processes.
So, what do you do when you find a gap in the way something needs to be done? You have one of two choices: you can temporarily patch it up, or you can prevent the problem from ever happening again. It pays to take the time to figure out what happened and solve the issue for the future.
A few years ago, I would spend an hour or two every morning meeting with individual members of our team. During these meetings, we would go over all the assigned tasks and projects to see where we stood. Activities were assigned verbally and written in each person’s organizer. In follow-up meetings, I would find that we had miscommunicated, and the to-dos had been misunderstood. Valuable time had been wasted. We soon realized that this method was too inefficient, and something had to change.
After researching the benefits of Cloud software, I knew a Cloud-based project management system was right for our firm. Project management software would allow us to share tasks and deadlines as well as improve our effectiveness as a team. Because we did not have an IT department, we needed software that is constantly upgraded and easy to implement. I weighed many options and finally chose Wrike. Here’s why we love Wrike.