By Eric Woodruff, CPA
Manager, Audit & Assurance Services
Your company is constantly changing and evolving, whether you are aware of it or not. The question is, are you adapting how your team is organized from a strategic standpoint?
Most businesses run on a day-to-day basis with roles and responsibilities that are changing over time – or just happen by accident. Often the owner or owners take on particular spheres of responsibility simply because it’s what they’re good at or enjoy doing. But is that really the best use of their skills and talents to further the company’s progress?
You need to ask questions like what are the primary revenue drivers for the business, who is responsible for regular operations, who oversees strategic planning and vision, and who are the employees with the most significant roles to play. This means taking the time to analyze your company to see if it’s organized in a strategic fashion that aligns with your ability to deliver on your overall goals.
The first step is obvious: do you even have an org chart? If not, now is the time to lay one out and see if it makes sense. In some cases, a specific role or title does not even represent what that person is actually responsible for on a day-to-day basis.
Look at all of your key managers and see if their areas of responsibility are a good match with their specific background and discipline – sales, engineering, manufacturing, marketing, etc. Quite often as the workplace duties evolve and people leave, you’ll find that you have someone overseeing a department for which they have little experience or passion.
Those “temporary” fixes have a way of enduring, and eventually you’ll discover parts of your operation are sagging. For example, sales and marketing are two areas that often are believed to be synonymous, but the disciplines are quite different in practice and require different skills to be successful.
Next, look further down the hierarchy and ask if every employee understands their own role in the organization, no matter how minor. It’s critical to any company’s success that everyone grasps how their role and duties contribute to the overall mission. Every team member is a link in the chain to delivering a quality product or service to customers.
At Sponsel CPA Group, we advise our clients to take a fresh look at their organization every two years or so and ask, “Is this how I want my company to run?” Just that simple question can open up all sorts of areas for analysis.
It’s more than just a matter of having ‘the right people on the bus,’ but making sure the right people are performing the appropriate role for their skills within the company.
You may well find that you have the right people serving in the wrong role. Or that the staff is “skill bankrupt” – no one has the proper skills in a particular area, so new blood is needed. This can often manifest in a business that is rapidly growing.
Our experience has shown that sometimes you may take a poor performing employee and find that they have been placed in a job they are poorly suited for; but by analyzing their personal skillset, you may find a position that the “non- performer” thrives at and they become a solid contributor in a position better suited for their skillset and talents.
Often people will outgrow a role, but sometimes a role outgrows the person you have in place. This doesn’t necessarily reflect badly on them, but most employees are loathe going to the boss and saying they feel like they’re in over their head.
We all like to think every employee will grow their skillset as the company expands, but often people reach a plateau in a particular area. Change becomes necessary to reach that next level.
Another thing to consider in organizing your team is the employees’ own comfort level and ambitions. By asking the right questions, you may find that one of your best workers is eager to take on new responsibilities – or that the person you’ve been eyeing for a new position likes where they are and the thought of additional duties would be a “de-motivator” to them personally.
Hopefully you have the right vision for your company and a strategic plan on how to get there. Now it’s time to see if you’re organized in the right way to help it come to fruition.
If you need advice on how to organize your operation to maximize efficiency, please call Eric Woodruff at (317) 613-7850 or email [email protected].