Organization Tips

Here are some organization tips to help you implement your turnaround planning. If your business is experiencing an actual crisis, you will need to do two major things with your business organization:

You will need to downsize into a more streamlined organization.
You will need to select a "turnaround team" to assist you in addressing your crisis.

These are the two most important organization tips you can implement. In fact, they are mandatory if you want to save your business-in-crisis. So, let's take a more detailed look at each of these organization tips.

Downsizing

I want to make one thing absolutely clear—I am not talking about “reengineering” your company, or “strategic restructuring” of your organization, or the latest acronym management fad…if your business is in crisis, so is your cash in crisis, and this means you must immediately reduce expenses, usually drastically, just to stop the hemorrhaging. That almost always means substantial downsizing.

Overzealous Downsizing?

Some time ago I read an article in Inc. magazine that said, “…too many failing enterprises hack their way to prosperity, slashing company costs and downsizing work forces. But when the dust settles, many small businesses find that they’ve lost some of their most talented employees.”

That may be, but at least they didn’t lose their business—as happens to thousands of business owner’s every day. For many thousands of businesses, “…when the dust settles…” all they have left is dust. Too bad they didn't know about these organization tips.

It is relatively simple for any manager or MBA student to put together a good productive “reengineered” organization chart…it is something quite different when there is not enough money to pay the wages for the positions on that organization chart.

When you downsize, you want to keep people around you that you can trust to do their jobs—and almost everyone else’s, if that’s what it takes. A willingness to take cross-responsibilities for each other’s job is crucial. Of course, you also want them to be highly innovative and willing to go the extra mile.

So, Can You Downsize Too Much?

In most cases, the answer is no. The point that needs to be clearly understood here is that rarely is an action you carry out too drastic for a business-in-crisis. Your business is failing and you want to save it. Unfortunately, not every business owner is willing to go to any extreme to save their business. That is a prime reason why there are so many business failures and terminations each year, and why so few businesses ever emerge from Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

“Don’t be afraid to take a big step if one is indicated. You can’t cross a chasm in two small jumps.” —David Lloyd George, Former Prime Minister of England

You will also need to make work assignments for each person in your new streamlined organization. To do this, you will need to write the name of every staff or supervisory person (usually not production workers, depending on the size of your business) who will be left in your organization across the top of a sheet(s) of paper. Under each name write large blocks of responsibility you expect that person to assume initially.

You keep doing this until you have delegated on paper all the categories of work that need to get done to keep your business going. Keep in mind that their current job and title mean nothing at this point. For example, depending on their backgrounds, you may want your CFO to be in charge of Product Development, or one of your production people to be in charge of Customer Service. The possibilities are endless, and you will have to think creatively.

ORGANIZATION TIP
Don’t even think about job descriptions. I repeat, Don’t even think about job descriptions. Got it?

The purpose of writing down the initial assignments is simply to communicate with everyone in your new organization what, in general, you expect each person to be responsible for at this point. Because your new concept of self-directed people is such a departure from your old organization, you need to give everyone a “starting place.” If you picked the right people for your new organization they will fill in the details themselves and work out any overlap in responsibilities between the work assignments.

The Turnaround Team

Of all the organization tips you may hear or read about, this one is the most important. You cannot make all the changes targeted in your Turnaround Plan by yourself—you will need considerable help. This assistance will come from within your new organization and we’ll call this group of employees your “turnaround team.”

“Turnaround team” is a very loose term, depending on the size of your enterprise. If you are small (say 20 employees or less) the turnaround team may include everyone who is left in your organization after downsizing.

However, rather than trying to communicate every detail of every action or issue to your entire employee group, it is more typical to have a small group of team members that you can work with on a more frequent basis. This then, can be referred to as your "turnaround team."

Outsiders will likely give you lots of organization tips when you are forming your team, but be aware that this is not like the self-managed teams we all read about in the business media. The turnaround team I am talking about here is more like the “dirty dozen.” For the most part, they are volunteers (in the beginning you will give each person the chance to “opt out” of the team) and they are of like spirit; people who say, “I can do that,” or, “give me that responsibility, I’ll see that it gets done.”

These people will make your turnaround and recovery happen—if they receive total support from you, their leader…and they are empowered to make necessary changes as they define them.

Of course you will need to provide the vision and leadership necessary to make the team succeed. That is why you are the leader!

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This report then, has given you a few organization tips that can help you manage your crisis, and turn your failing business around. The next report that can help manage your crisis is "Effective Business Communication"—which goes hand-in-glove with "Organization Tips." You can access this next report on Communication here.

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SBI!