Fundamentals
Maybe there is something that we are endowed with by the Creator that gives us an opportunity to naturally figure out how to make this a better place. ~ Bob Weir (Grateful Dead)
As a business owner or leader, you know firsthand the pressures of making critical decisions that impact your enterprise and the lives of your employees and customers. And in some cases, even the lives of members of your community. Who of us hasn’t, at one time or another, been so distracted by moving fast or grabbing market share that we took our eye off the ball of the fundamentals and like a pedestrian looking the wrong way, got hit by a bus we didn’t even see coming?
The ball, of course, represents the fundamentals of your business. For most of us, customer focus, quality and cost fall into our list of fundamentals. In the building industry safety is key, both for the welfare of our employees and for the bottom line of our business. What are the top five fundamentals of your business? Do you have a way to monitor those fundamentals?
Some of you may be thinking, Sharon, I’m a one person show. Do I really need to be identifying and following the fundamentals of my business. And my answer to all of my solo entrepreneurs out there is absolutely YES! As a solo enterprise, your business is even more sensitive to any change in the dynamics. When an employee of McDonalds has a break down in customer focus by giving a customer a McChicken when they ordered a Big Mac and then fails to correct the situation, McDonalds has one unhappy customer who may McSplit and never return or more likely tells family and friends about their poor experience. When you are a solo entrepreneur, in a moment of thoughtlessness, you fail to deliver to your customer, you could be losing someone who generates 25-50% of your revenue.
So we all have a ball called the fundamentals of our business. How do we keep an eye on that ball? I like to have some key metrics that tell me how my business is performing. And then when one or more of those metrics begins to trend negatively, I focus my energies on determining the root cause and taking any necessary corrective actions. Safety is a good example of the benefits of monitoring metrics and taking appropriate, timely action. Most accidents are not single events, but the culmination of a series of small events and poor decision making. For example, a crew gets to a work site late. They feel rushed and know they need to get this job done quickly to stay on schedule for the day. In the rush of the moment, one of the crew members fails to put on safety glasses, figuring it’s a small job that will only take a few minutes and going back to the truck for the glasses will just eat up more time. Then the drill bit kicks up a metal shaving injuring the crew member. Now we have an injured employee, insurance issues, lost time for the employee and the crew, delays with other projects, etc. All of those consequences came out of the crew feeling rushed. And so in this instance, I’d want to know what about our project planning or scheduling process is leading crews to feel rushed for time so significantly that they have started to compromise their own safety.
My challenge for all of us in August is to step back for a moment, clarify the key fundamentals of our unique businesses, determine what metrics will give us the best indication of the status of those fundamentals and then make the monitoring of those metrics part of our daily activity as business leaders and owners. Please don’t compromise safety or procrastinate in doing what needs to be done.
Go out and make it a great day!
Sharon McGee