Business > Ask an Expert
Business Growth and Service Quality
Four tools for a successful practice.
FROM: JAN-FEB 2008 ISSUE | BY MARK WARDELL
I own a small public practice with a growing client base, but our pace of growth is beginning to negatively impact our ability to keep up with our work. Do you have any advice for helping us continue to grow without diminishing our quality of service?
Congratulations for realizing that now is the time to take a step back and consider your pace of growth. If you’re envisioning something greater and something more profitable for your firm, you need to start thinking like a business owner. You need to delegate work and put systems in place to ensure you are running your firm like a business.
Following are four business tools that, if properly implemented, will have a positive impact not only on your overall success but on your level of sanity as well.
A Business Manual
It houses your strategies, your policies, your systems, and any other information you need to run your firm with cognizance. Not only will this manual help smooth out the daily management of your firm, it will also give everyone involved peace of mind that things are being done according to a plan.
An Employee Manual
A good employee manual should serve double duty as both a job description/orientation tool and an ongoing training manual. It should show your people not only what is expected of them, but how to do it. When you create this manual, your goal should be to make the process of bringing in new employees as smooth as possible and to educate and empower them to take ownership of their work.
An Analysis Manual
An analysis manual will record all the relevant numbers concerning the status of your firm’s growth. If growth is important to you, this is where you’ll track your progress. Certainly this manual includes your financial statements, but those aren’t the only numbers that are important. You may want to track the amount of overtime your employees are putting in per month, or the number of new clients being brought in, and how. Tracking this information doesn’t need to be a complicated process; it just needs to be relevant. So take a little time to identify the indicators you would most like to monitor, and begin tracking them on a monthly basis. The information you gather will be priceless. Also, don’t be afraid to share the results with your employees. Involving them in this way will help motivate them to reach the weekly or monthly goals needed to ensure you grow profitably.
A Business Calendar
A business calendar is a simple, yet effective tool for tracking the annual cycles of activity within your firm. There may be times of the year when you want to review your budgets, consider growth, hold employee reviews. If your goal is to grow profitably, it’s important to organize these priorities so they don’t fall through the cracks. Planning in this way also encourages you to continue to think strategically about your firm as a business, which is critical for achieving your goals over the long haul.
[ TOP ]
Mark Wardell is president of Wardell Professional Development Inc. (www.wardell.biz), an advisory group specializing in growth management for owner-managed companies.