Despite the current economic climate, organisations can still perform well, albeit with a smaller staff and reduced customer base. According to Jane Macgregor, performance consultant and corporate mentor, good leadership, motivation and teamwork are the most important components to ensuring success.
“Current business performance is, no doubt, affected by retrenchments, hiring freezes, budget cuts and the loss of customers. However, companies with leaders who understand the overall business and are always considering the bigger picture can still perform well and thus ensure their survival,” says Macgregor.
Adapting for survival
“Business has changed and will need to continue to change in order to adapt to the new market place. Leaders must adapt the company’s vision, mission and goals to meet these new conditions, even if the company is smaller and is aiming at a smaller customer base.”
These managers, CEOs and directors are responsible, not only for setting these goals, but also:
For communicating the goals effectively to staff
Inspiring passion, commitment and motivation
Getting buy-in and understanding from staff
“Regardless of the economy there are still customers out there who need your products or services and they are still willing to pay for them. A business’s success stems from the ability to provide these things consistently better than competitors,”
Identifying valuable performance
All members of staff from factory floor to management are skilled and need to continually upskill themselves to improve performance. In addition, each employee needs to understand the business processes and the value that they individually bring to the company. Enabling staff to determine their own performance on a daily basis contributes to their general understanding of the bigger picture and allows them to see the value that is generated from what they do.
Perform like a well-tuned orchestra
Macgregor, who uses a musical model in her consulting, likens an organisation to an orchestra. “Bad performances result from a leader or conductor failing to motivate employees or players, or where everyone is playing their own tune. This leads to poor quality and a definite lack of audience or customers.”
An orchestra can play the same piece of music with fewer instruments. However, it is vital that only the right instruments are cut out to ensure that the sound is the same. In the same vein, a company needs to ensure that performance does not start slipping in recessionary times with the associated cost and staff reductions.
“A company is a complex system, just like an orchestra,” says Macgregor. “Each action, employee and resource of the business works together towards a common goal, and thus they all affect one another.”
“Relating the analogy to a company means that the basic business processes, and more importantly the value that each step adds, need to be understood. These define how the business hangs together. Once these are understood, rework and duplication of effort can start to be eliminated, thereby saving on costs.”
Employee involvement
Macgregor notes that the most important facet is the involvement of the employees. “Not just one or two, but all. Going back to the idea of a company as a system, each employee has a role that is as equally important as another. How they choose to perform in this role can make a company successful or go out of business. They can choose to play to their full talent or just play to get by.”
If all employees and management have the right instrument; know when and what they must play; keep practicing to get better and better; know the overall tune and the value that they add to this tune, then a company will be successful irrespective of the economic climate.
Jane Macgregor is head consultant at Maestro Performance which enables companies – large, small, NGOs, etc. – to deliver maestro performances daily. For more information, please visit: www.maestroperformance.co.za.
