December 2007

Continuing Your Success in the New Year

Working the numbers

If you are like our most successful business clients, you probably collect data, review reports, and analyze key business indicators in order to decide how to increase profitability, improve customer satisfaction, grow sales, or improve the efficiency of your operations.

One of our business associates, a CPA, recently demonstrated how he uses a customizable software program to help his clients test how different scenarios impact the bottom-line results. This program allows him to select varying degrees of changes in such multiple key areas as inventory, accounts receivable, product pricing, overhead, and product costs. Using this program, a business owner might learn that a 15-day decrease in their accounts receivable could reduce their negative cash flow by 50%, while a 2% increase in sales could, if business processes are functioning incorrectly, actually increase their negative cash flow, by 20%. This program crunches the numbers to help take the guesswork out of choosing a strategy to increase business profit.

Investing in people

Even as our successful clients have seen a steady growth in their businesses over the past several years, today's economic environment has made them more cautious about predicting continued growth with their current operating models. While they each explore different ways to strengthen infrastructure, build capacity, improve efficiency, increase sales, or develop new products to maintain their profits, all of them are asking if their current employees have the skills required to lead their companies into the future.

Several of these clients are planning to bring in upper-management talent from the "outside" with experience in similar companies larger than their own. All are promoting younger, talented employees who have exhibited the ability to learn and grow into positions of increased responsibility and leadership. While these personnel changes are strengthening the capacity of their organizations, they are also creating significant changes and challenges for all of the employees who work for them.

Engaging people for lasting change

Whatever their method of analysis or the ultimate decisions they make, our clients will succeed in introducing change into their businesses depending on how well they involve their employees in those decisions. It is easy to get caught up in developing strategies that seem logical and appropriate and then expect everyone else to see them the same way. However, employees who are uninvolved in the decision-making process sometimes interpret changes as "politically motivated" or unwarranted (See this month's article by Toni Roldan); and they may impede the success of the changes.

At Win Win Workplace Solutions, we not only work with our clients to create their new business strategies and to develop the talent who will lead the change; but we also help our clients "roll out" these change initiatives to their employees in ways that build their support and commitment to the changes and to the success of the company.

We hope that when you are ready to "work on your business" you will let us help you create the strategies, align your human resources, build your capacity, and grow your profits.

We wish you a very Happy New Year and a Successful 2008!

Rick and Gail