There are a bunch of unhappy people out there.  And the really scary part of that equation is that most of them are your employees (well maybe not your employees, but someone’s employees).

Several recent studies have shown that over 50% of employees are unhappy with their job and would consider leaving if they got the chance!  Imagine 50% of your employees leaving you next month…I imagine that would make you unhappy as well.

It sounds far fetched that a bunch of people would leave at once, but there are a lot of people who have held onto jobs they didn’t like for a long time simply because they didn’t think there would be anything else out there.  As the economy starts to warm up (which it’s doing slowly) there will be new opportunities and those unhappy people are going to bolt – even if it’s a lateral move, just to get out!

What can you do?

Now is the time to start seriously thinking about what you can do to get people back into the positive side of the equation (and hopefully keep them on board and productive).

Famous author and coach Marshall Goldsmith wrote an interesting article on what employees can do if they’re unhappy:  Why you aren’t happy and what to do to make things better.  Based on a study he did, the unhappiness doesn’t directly correlate with hours worked or focus on fun versus work.  However he did discover that employees who work in an environment that matches their own Core Values are likely to be happier…in other words, you need to get the Right People on the Bus!

Another good article from Sean Silverthorne – How to Fix an Unhappy Employee, looks at 3 additional components that help drive work satisfaction:

• Work on what you enjoy
• Work on what you’re good at
• Work on something valuable to the larger organization

Great employees are the lifeblood of a successful business.  Without happy, productive employees, you don’t have a business, so it’s definitely worth the time to figure out how to make them happy to be there.

Are you concerned about your employees?  What are you doing in these challenging times to make them productive and happy?  Share your thoughts in the comments below – I’d love to hear them.

Shawn Kinkade  Kansas City Business Coach

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A lot of people struggle with establishing processes for their businesses.  It feels bureaucratic, stifling and it can be some serious work up front to get things documented and figured out.

However it’s not rocket science…by any stretch of the imagination.

The trick, assuming that you’re a business that’s already up and running is that you are already following a process.  You may not be following it consistently, you may not have a great handle on all of the components (i.e. it’s not written anywhere) but in order to get the work done you are following certain steps to go from start to finished.

Let’s take an example that every business is dealing with – paying bills (note – if you have a business without any expenses, you’re probably leaving opportunities on the table).

There’s a chance that you pay bills in a very reactionary manner – when they come across your desk and you have a couple of free minutes you write a check or go online and just pay whatever needs to be paid.  Hopefully you record the checks and validate the amounts on the bill, but it’s a start.  As simple as that is – it’s a process and you could document it fairly easily. 

It’s more likely that you have a set period of time (maybe the end of the week, the 1st and the 15th of the month, etc.).  At that point, your person responsible for accounts payable picks up all of the invoices that have accumulated (you probably have a bill folder).  You may have a review step where the invoices are checked with who ever should have the details and with ownership.  You may have a step to confirm there are adequate funds for payment.  Assuming everything is good, no disputes and there’s money in the bank, then checks would be written and you would do whatever’s needed to make sure the expenses are reflected in your accounting (a different process).

That’s a process…it might be missing a few details and you’d need to outline what needs to be done if there is a dispute or if there’s not enough cash, but overall it’s pretty straightforward.

Why bother?

If you’re a single person business without a lot of change or growth going on, you may not need to worry too much about processes.  However, if you ever want to get out of doing everything yourself, or if you have employees who own the responsibility for different aspects of your business, a written process is critical.

When you document, use and improve processes on a regular basis, you can turn your business into an incredible machine that can eventually run without you.  Imagine taking a 2 month vacation and everything is running smoothly…without you!

When you don’t use written processes – especially with multiple employees, you are asking for failures, inconsistent delivery, miscommunication and general chaos.  You will be unable to grow and things will be a struggle.  (no vacation for you!).

The six elements of a good process

A client of mine recently sent me (and his staff) this concise and powerful description of the elements that are needed for a quality process:

1. Must produce desired result
2. Must be in writing
3. Must be accountable to someone
4. May be duplicated by anyone
5. Must be simple
6. Must bring clarity to the whole team

The goal is to eventually make everything as simple as possible (and no simpler) and maximize your results.

That doesn’t sound like rocket science to me.

Does your company have written processes?  Are there any additional elements missing from the description above?  I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

Shawn Kinkade Kansas City Business Coach

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photo by ed ludwick 

The following is a guest post by Mike Vande Brake, partner at Vande Brake and Baker CPAs.

It’s nearly time to begin making those New Year’s resolutions, the wishful thoughts borne out of our guilt for the things we typically let slip. Lose weight. Exercise more. Eat fewer sweets. You get the idea.

We can all come up with something we should be doing or at least something we ought to do better. Sometimes these things are trivial, and if we don’t keep our resolution, the impact is negligible.

But there are those rare occasions when a New Year’s resolution can completely change the course of your life.

Even in our business lives, we set goals: I will not avoid the person in the next cubicle but will, instead, be friendly and open to conversation even though my inbox is a mile high.

Yet for many business owners, particularly new ones, the day-to-day trials of working with clients, answering phone calls, or completing the day’s task list can be overwhelming. The thought of setting a goal other than “Be home by 5:30 p.m. one day a week” is a pipe dream.

There is one goal, though, that may make all of your dreams come true: organization

Drowning in Paper

Do you keep your receipts in a shoebox? In a drawer? Do you wait until the end of the year to balance your checkbook? Does the idea of using a computer to track your finances send you into a cold sweat?

Being organized can be daunting, particularly when you’ve never spent a lot of time perfecting the skill. Do you look at the piles on the floor and wonder if you can actually drown in a sea of paper?

You’re not alone, trust me. As a CPA, I have encountered organization at its worst…and its best.

What do you think about this scenario?

You always know how much money is in the bank and, therefore, you know you can hire more staff or move out of your cramped office space and into something bigger. You know the balance on your credit cards and can weigh that against your cash flow. You can calculate your profits and losses with little energy.

Does this sound good to you? How about this?

It’s November. You have a meeting with your tax advisor, and you bring with you a print-out your financial statements or even just a simple spreadsheet with a summary of your income and expenses. Your CPA uses the numbers to estimate your tax liability and then discusses with you several options you have to save tax money. Now may be a perfect time to purchase the equipment you need to make your operation more efficient. Maybe this year’s tax liability isn’t so bad, so you ought to wait to purchase an asset until the beginning of next year. The possibilities are there, and yes, you could save money by reducing your tax bill.

When all is said and done, organization gives you the control to make wise financial decisions and avoid penalties that result from poor planning. Just think, you can plan now to set aside money long before the tax bill is due. No payment plans, no extensions, no surprises.

What Would Martha Do?

My wife loves Martha Stewart. We’ve considered adding a line in our household budget specifically for her “Martha-inspired projects.” Take a deep breath. Being organized doesn’t have to make Martha proud. It can be a simple system, like filing receipts by month and reconciling your various bank accounts and credit cards on a regular basis. It can (and should) include computer software that, though initially costing you a little extra time to learn, can track your finances, investments, and notes payable with a few keystrokes. You don’t necessarily have to go back in time, either. You can start today and work forward.

Regardless of what your organization system looks like, this will always be true: you rarely will be surprised by a bounced check, you will be armed with the financial information you need to make wise business decisions, and you will save money.

Make the resolution to get organized. It might be first resolution that can change the course of your business forever.

Note – I can highly recommend Mike as someone that can really help get your financials organized and provide quality advice and support.  He’s not your stereotypical CPA – he’s friendly, easy to talk to and is comfortable with all aspects of business.   – Shawn

Shawn Kinkade  Kansas City Business CoachingSimilar Posts:

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The task could be as simple as getting a ball from one end of the screen to the other, but in the game you had to use the devices you had on hand to make that happen, rockets, treadmills, levers, springs, gravity – a big part of the fun was coming up with the most creative way to solve the problem.

Ultimately, for the harder puzzles, you ended up using a lot of trial and error to find a solution.

In fact the designers were very careful to simulate physics and natural laws in such a way that the results of any given action were repeatable. 

Who wants to build a machine that only works sometimes?

How does this tie into small business?  A big part of the challenge with a small business (or any business for that matter) is developing your processes and organizations in such a way that what you do is repeatable and doesn’t rely on chance, a winning personality or even a specific skill set for the outcome.

Have you ever heard of a business that had that ‘superstar’ performer that did stuff that nobody else could do?  In small business environments, a lot of the time that superstar is the owner – which makes it really hard to expand the business (or take a vacation…see Are you stuck trading time for money?)

The same thing happens in a corporate environment, but generally it’s less of a risk or an impact because it’s really unusual that any 1 person could impact a sizable part of a company’s operations.  However it happens all the time in a small business.

One way to minimize risk – and ultimately set yourself free, is to build your business into an Incredible Machine.  Not in the sense of complicated contraptions to complete simple tasks (although sometimes it feels that way – payroll, accounting, creating your TPS Report…with a cover page).

No – building your Incredible Machine is about creating and documenting repeatable action plans that you need to run your business.

These action plans will cover everything from how you produce your product or service down to how your creating your marketing plan, tracking time and expenses and communicating vacation plans.

Obviously this is a big task – after all it is an Incredible Machine, but the good news is it can be done.

Q: How do you eat an Elephant?

A: One bite at a time.

Here’s a recommended approach for eating this elephant:

1. Create an overall outline of the areas that you need to cover with plans.  Don’t worry about getting everything right, you’ll be adding and changing as you go along.  I would suggest doing this online – maybe using a set of folders on a shared space to organize the areas (i.e. operations, marketing, hr, etc.).
2. Once you’ve got a structure in place, set up a monthly meeting and determine how large of a bite you want to take each month.  My recommendation would be to shoot for 1 action plan documented every week – at the end of a year, you’ll have around 50 completed which should be a pretty big chunk of what you do.
3. At the monthly meeting you will review what got documented last month and decide what’s on the agenda for the current month.  A lot of times this can be issue driven – use the act of detailing and documenting the process to resolve issues.
4. Obviously this isn’t just for the business owner – a better answer is to have managers and staff create the plans that fall into their areas and review them as a group.  You don’t need to spend too much time reviewing or trying to perfect them – the real answer is to use them and have them updated / changed over time based on actually using the processes.
5. This process should tie into any existing operations manuals you have.  If you’ve got some processes that are already well documented, then you’re ahead of the game.
6. As your staff brings you issues, you will be able to direct them to the action plans for resolutions.  If there’s not an action plan in place, they’ll need to write one or if necessary they can update one that’s already there.

Remember, the goal is to build your machine in such a way that ultimately you as the business owner aren’t needed for day to day operations and everything will run just fine without you – whether it’s a weeklong vacation or a 3 month sabbatical.

When you’ve documented your business in this way, not only will you as the owner be able to free yourself up to focus on business growth strategies (or more time for yourself…) but you’ve also created a full-fledged operations manual that will increase the Sales Price / value of your business immensely once you get to the point of starting to think about an exit plan.

So, what’s your Incredible Machine look like?   Now is the perfect time to start building your machine!

Shawn Kinkade  www.aspirekc.com

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In order to make more money, based on the way they are currently working, they personally need to work more hours.  The problem with that approach is that they’re already working more than they’d like to be working, and generally it’s been that way for quite a while.

I hate to break it to them, but they actually have a JOB, not a business. 

(Along those lines, here’s a great article from Steve Pavlina on 10 Reasons to never get a job!    He states things pretty strongly, but even as someone that had a job for 15 years, I think he’s right on the money.) 

So ultimately what is the problem with the small business owner being the constraint for their business?

1. They are trading time for money – either directly as an hourly rate, or somewhat indirectly as the only resource available to the business that can do certain critical functions (i.e. sell the product, make the product, deliver the service).
2. When it’s all said and done, their business, without them working it, isn’t worth much if anything.  The new owner would immediately have to jump into 50, 60, maybe even 80 hours of work, just to keep the revenue stream.  How much would you pay for that opportunity?
3. It’s exhausting…and you better hope that you don’t run into an injury or an illness that precludes you from getting the work done.

Having said that,  there are times when this isn’t a problem.  Almost all new businesses fit this description – potentially for several years as they’re in ’start-up’ mode.  Also I’ve met more than a few people that totally understand their situation and they’re doing exactly what they want to do and they have no plans to ‘sell’ their business when they’re ready to move on.

However if you’ve recognized that this isn’t the situation you want to be in, what can you do about it?  Ultimately the right answer depends on what kind of business you’re in and what you, as the owner, want to create.

Here are some high level ideas that might be helpful in brainstorming some next steps for your situation:

As a short-term fix, identify the non-critical functions that you could outsource to a service or an assistant kind of position.  This could be things like book-keeping, follow-up communications to existing clients, web site updates, ordering supplies, etc. 

This will give you some leverage, but ultimately you are still the bottleneck.  It’s a great short-term fix and a step in the right direction, but if you don’t follow-up with something else it will only get you so far.

Pick a key area that you could delegate to the right person.  Maybe you need to hire a salesperson to go out and be your rainmaker, leaving you with the responsibility of delivery (along with all of the other owner responsibilities). 

This can be dangerous for a couple of reasons:  People that are driven enough and talented enough to really take control over something are likely good candidates to start their own business or take the clients they develop with them to their next opportunity.  Secondly if you abdicate your responsibilities to your new employee, you might find out too late that they’re not getting things done the way you want them done.  The key is to delegate the work but keep the ultimate responsibility for quality, using key metrics to manage the situation as much as needed.

Productize the output of your business. 

If you’re currently making widgets by hand, can you find/create an automated manufacturing process? 

If you have a service business, can you create Do It Yourself products like books, audio solutions or videos that clients could buy to solve their problems without your direct help?

The beauty of this approach is that in a lot of cases it’s actually adding a revenue stream, not replacing one.  Having said that, it can be difficult to do well and as a lot of published authors can tell you, it’s difficult to make money from a book.

Change the game  – you’re seeing examples of this on the technology front a lot these days.  Before Apple came up with the IPod, mobile music was a Walkman radio or portable CD players. 

Amazon totally changed the way people thought about buying books.

Obviously this doesn’t apply to everything, but if you can come up with that new paradigm that the market adopts, you can write your own ticket!

Finally, here’s the long term view:

Create a set of business systems for all aspects of your business that minimize the skill level or experience of the employees needed to run them successfully. 

The perfect model of this is McDonalds.  Virtually every position in a McDonalds can be run by a minimum wage high school student with very little training.  All the employees need to do is to follow the system as written for their job.

This sounds daunting, and it can be.  However you don’t have to do this all at once.  If you pick one area and document what you personally are doing to the point that you could hand that document to a new employee, complete with metrics that measure success, then you’ve got the ball rolling. 

It can take a lot of time and a lot of iterations of improvement, but if you can do this across the board, you will be free of the day to day needs of your business. 

You will be free…and your business will be worth several multiples more than what it was worth before!

The best way to really make tangible progress on any of these ideas is to have a business advisor (or Peer Group Advisory Board) that you can use as a sounding board, help you with brainstorming and hold you accountable on taking actions.  If you think you’re in the market for this kind of thing, give me a call – I know some resources that can help. 

I’d love to hear other ideas on how to solve this dilemma.  Share your thoughts here.

Shawn Kinkade   www.aspirekc.com

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