Are you neglecting your company’s long-term success by focusing too much on short-term challenges and the economy?

In business there are very few absolutes.? Like human nature, most traits, aspects, and values of a business are on a continuum.?? For example, you cannot say that a business is either successful or a failure.? There are often aspects of the business that are improving towards greater success, while at the same time you may be aware of problems, risks, and challenges that need to be addressed.? The real skill here is finding a balance.? Whether it is a large corporation or a small entrepreneurial startup, being aware of and keeping these balances in check is more important than you might think.

I am reminded of a company that I worked for in the past that had a large call center operation.? As you might expect, the management of the call center was very focused on metrics and KPI’s.

·?????? How much time does a customer sit on hold before their call is answered?

·?????? If a problem is reported, how much time does it take before the cause of problem is identified and resolved?

·?????? If a customer has a complaint or is dissatisfied, how much time passes before their issue is resolved and the customer is satisfied with your service once again?

Call center management was worried that customer satisfaction was going down and that customers had complained about long hold times.? They focused all training efforts on closing calls quickly so that the agents could move on to the next customer as efficiently as possible.? Although customer wait times declined and initial customer satisfaction went up because of the prompt response, customers then started mentioning that they did not feel they got adequate service on the first call, because they were rushed off of the phone.? Time to problem resolution increased, and the number of calls a customer had to make to resolve their problem also increased.? This led to management focusing training on customer service and resolution management, which increased hold times.? As you might guess, a vicious cycle was created where management was always focusing on the immediate problem at hand but did not look at the long-term success and improvement of the call center’s overall operations, as well as what other issues that the short term-fixes might have created.

What can we learn from this scenario, that we can apply to our own businesses?

1)????? There was an obvious disconnect between management and the call center employees.? Management was so focused on the numbers that they never bothered to ask the employees answering the phones to provide any perspective or feedback.

2)????? Employee frustration went up and morale went down because the employees were getting conflicting orders.? "This month we will work on making a given metric better and next month we will focus on something different that will make that same metric’s performance worse."

3)????? The real issue at hand was, “how do we balance customer service against time spent getting results to ensure that we are keeping the customers happy as well as making them feel that they were getting excellent service and the results that they were paying for?”? Not an easy thing to fix, but if you do not identify the entire problem, then your “fix” will also be incomplete.

This may be a relatively simple example, but it is very applicable to our business environment today.? Changes in technology, changes in legal and regulatory environments and changes in the economic and potentially the political picture seem to have many of us focused a little bit too much on the short-term issues at hand.? This is human nature.? Human beings are trained to be problem solvers and results getters.? Although dealing with your immediate challenges is important, your efforts may be less beneficial or even harmful to the business because the problem solvers are losing site of the big picture and the company’s longer-term goals.? What can be done to change this?

·?????? Get out of “firefighting” mode.? If all you are doing is reacting to the immediate problem at hand and throwing all of your resources at the resolution of that problem, then you will never be able to work on the long-term success of the business.

·?????? Sometimes it is organizational.? If the same people are responsible for both the short term fixes as well as the long-term planning, then they are likely overwhelmed and not doing an effective job at either task.

·?????? Develop a culture that values problem solving is a team sport.? The workers, the managers, accounting, legal, and leadership will almost always look at a given problem differently.? Every employee of the business will have observations and suggestions that may look very different from the perspective of a person in a different position.? The consideration of multiple viewpoints and perspectives will almost always be more beneficial to problem solving than the boss just walking into the room, issuing orders and then failing to listen.

·?????? Develop a proactive approach and make it a part of your company’s culture.? At a minimum, the resolution of a challenge should come with a discussion around what the root cause of the problem was as well as what steps can be taken to ensure that the same problem does not happen again.? Ideally the organization will formally devote time and resources to both short-term problems as well as long-term planning and strategy.? Organizations that excel at this develop a knowledge base and policies that say you cannot resolve an issue without documenting the problem and how it was resolved.? If you solve a problem and then disregard it and walk away, you will be doomed to repeat the same mistakes over and over again.

·?????? Too many hats may be another issue.? In smaller businesses and especially start-ups, it is common for one person to have multiple responsibilities that would be separate job positions in a larger company.? Besides creating organizational and potentially security issues, one person with too many hats to wear will likely be overwhelmed and burn out, especially if those responsibilities conflict in some way.? The key here is to discuss the multiple hats with the person who is wearing them to get perspective on whether that is the ideal set of hats for any one person to wear.

At the end of the day, be honest with yourself and admit that you need help when you are out of your area of expertise.? Besides human nature and common sense, we also have to deal with ego and pride in a business.? ?There is a common misconception that goes something like, “I am a successful master plumber, so when I open my own plumbing business, it will be one of the best.”? Sure, the plumbing work may be top notch, but if you are also the accountant, the supervisor and the marketing department, then you should probably delegate some or all of these other responsibilities to someone who may know more than you do on these topics. Then, you can focus on plumbing excellence.

Strategy development, operational improvements, financial and other long-term planning and even an exit strategy are all critical aspects of running a business.? These types of things are best left to an expert, if you are not trained and have experience in these areas.? Too many of us are saying, “once the business is making more money I will do those other things,” or “I will hire a bookkeeper when I get the finances more organized.”? I have heard far too many of my colleagues say things like “I wish I had made that decision a year ago.”? This tells us that putting off the decision to change or improve your business is likely going to slow you down and have you spending time and effort on things that are not in your wheelhouse.? Procrastination and delaying the growth of your business, just because you are too busy to focus on it, should be a warning flag that you need to re-evaluate your priorities.? I actually once had a colleague tell me, “I am too busy to take a time management class.”? My trick for this is a simple one.? Ask yourself, “If I had a friend or a colleague that was in the exact same situation that I am in today, what would my advice be to them?”? …and here is the most difficult part of all.? Follow your own advice!? Being overly critical of yourself, not following the rules and procedures that are in place everyone else, and overanalyzing situations at the cost of doing nothing are all harmful to a business, but so many business leaders do these things that it is considered “normal”.

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