Is it really necessary?
Ian Kinnery - The Scale-Up Coach
Founder & CEO at Kinnery - scale-up business coaching for ambitious entrepreneurs
As businesses grow they get exponentially more complicated and as businesses grow we inevitably add people and processes to the structure. One of the consequences of the great disruptor that Covid has proven to be that business leaders are looking at these things afresh and asking the question ‘is it really necessary?’
It is a great opportunity to take a look at the processes and people in our businesses and ask ourselves the same question. The answer will be different for all of us and many of the answers will be marginal but what interests me is what criteria will you use to decide?
To a large extent I think some of the answers will depend on who we think we are, who our core customers are and what ur value proposition is.
A high class hotel might decide that its regular refurbishment program isn’t really necessary but that one decision could radically impact the perception of that hotel particularly if the refurbishment program is stopped for any length of time.
Marketing initiatives would be another area to think about. It is easy to decide certain marketing initiatives aren’t really necessary without taking into account the longer term effects. It is really important to test and measure the impact that any marketing has, but much harder to measure is the cumulative impact. Marketing is a bit like a flywheel. It is hard to get momentum going but when it is going the short term impact of stopping may be masked by the flywheel effect but over time the flywheel will slow and eventually stop. Trust me these flywheels are difficult to get back up to momentum again.
A similar area is in staff training and development. We are all where we are today because of the cumulative impact of the quality of every decision we have made up to now and the quality of those decisions is, to a great degree. Predicated upon the education and the coaching we have received. There is a similar flywheel effect.
These are tough and difficult decisions, having clear criteria and a thinking partner can help you make higher quality decisions.