As an entrepreneur, your goal is to watch your business succeed and expand. For many, these dreams are short-lived due to the implementation of ineffective efficiency and productivity strategies. So, what are these inefficient practices that could potentially cripple your business? Here are four such practices you avoid.
1. Displaced priorities
A business owner has a lot of responsibilities under their belt. Although multitasking may seem like a valuable skill, it often breeds inefficiency. The variety of roles and tasks you would need to complete may lead to focusing on numerous things at once but not meeting any of them. On the other hand, you may end up focusing on one aspect of your business and ignoring the other elements. This creates a backlog of activity and only leaves more work to be done.
To avoid this, you need to strike a balance by prioritizing your tasks and responsibilities. You can do this by creating a weekly to-do list of all your vital deadlines and activities. Where needed, you can outsource companies to handle specific areas in your business on your behalf. For example, instead of managing your company’s debt collection, you can hire services from companies such as Improved Data Services (read here on Improved Data Services reviews).
2. Micromanaging your team
The hiring process’s whole purpose is to select individuals you believe to be capable of completing tasks assigned to them. Once you have assembled your team, you should trust them to deliver work of good quality. Micromanaging your team would cause you to waste and resources that could have been beneficial elsewhere. It also breeds resentment and dissatisfaction amongst your employees, causing them to quit and further reduce your business’s efficiency and productivity rate. You can avoid this by delegating various responsibilities to them, believing that, despite your varying methods, they would be able to deliver.
3. Overpromising and under-delivering
Businesses want to win customers over by impressing them to gain their loyalty. However, doing this by exaggerating what you are capable of is not the right way. Telling your customers what they want to hear would only show promising results in the short term. Your “below expectation results” would reveal the truth about your business to your customers. And this would lead to you losing your customers. Be honest about what you can do and offer creative solutions within your means to avoid overpromising.
4. Unproductive meetings
Meetings are a vital aspect of a business’s operations as it allows you to be in direct communication with your employees. However, meetings can sometimes affect productivity negatively. In some cases, the meetings are not productive as they do not seem to serve a purpose or can be regarded as unnecessary. A study found that a company was spending about 7,000 hours a year on weekly meetings and taking about 300,000 total working hours from their employees. To avoid this unproductive practice, you must try to find other effective communication forms with your employees, such as email or phone calls. Where there is a crucial need for a face-to-face meeting, be sure to keep it short and to the point.
