Are you singing, "I Will Survive"?

If your business mantra sounds like a corporate remake version of Diana Ross's "I Will Survive" - you're not alone. It seems like everywhere you turn these days, we're getting more bad news about our current "financial crisis". Businesses that were well positioned for growth are shifting into maintenance mode. Businesses that were just getting by are closing up shop. So... how can a business survive in these tough times? By adapting... Be Focused You can't be all things to all people. Consider whether your business is spread too thin and whether you can consolidate your business offerings to do fewer things exceptionally well. Pick what you're going to do well and focus on doing those things profitably. Define this clearly in your company goals and the individual goals of all your people. Make sure these goals are measurable and that they are in alignment with your overall business strategies. A common mistake is to have individual goals which end up driving behavior that is contrary to a company's objectives. For instance, a productivity goal which inadvertently creates a customer service issue isn't helping the company to develop loyal customers. Get focused on your core objectives. Provide the accountability and structure so those core objectives are clear and actionable by everyone in your organization. Connect With Your Customers Just because you're getting your house in order by trimming costs and possibly restructuring, doesn't mean that you can forget about the customer. They are ALWAYS the most important part of your business. This is the time to personally connect with your customers, ask them how you're doing, and make changes to give them what they want. Businesses that sacrifice quality and service likely won't survive. Be Lean Change the way you look at your business: look at your business as a collection of processes. All businesses have waste hidden within their processes. A business develops its ways of doing things, or its processes, organically. These "ways of doing things" are passed down by tribal knowledge within the business. Lean / process improvement involves purposefully trimming the fat, pairing down the activities of your business to the minimal, necessary steps that add value to the customer. An easy way to determine if a step is value-added is to ask, "if I was the customer, would I pay extra for this step or activity?" If the answer is "no" and if it's not required by law, find a way to minimize or eliminate it. The goal is to have processes that are easy to use, are done right the first time, are fast, customer friendly, adapt to changing customer and business needs and maximize the use of the businesses' skills and resources. This process improvement activity doesn't happen naturally and is not intuitive. However, when process improvement becomes a part of your business culture, it delivers rapid and continuing improvements to your bottom line business results. The top companies in nearly every industry utilize focused goals, a priority on customer satisfaction, and process improvement to become efficient, trim costs, and ensure their products and services delight the customer. Now more then ever is the time to harness these tools to enable your business to survive in 2009 and for many years to come. 2009-03-31T18:27:53Z

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If your business mantra sounds like a corporate remake version of Diana Ross's 'I Will Survive' - you're not alone. Learn how to survive the tough economic times by getting focused, connecting with your customers and becoming lean.