Customer focus combined with proper alignment of vision with strategy, structure, people and processes is the best way to outperform and outlast your competition. When these critical components are in harmony, results are astounding. To sharpen your competitive edge, look at what keeps you from getting results you deserve.

Whether you are a group of one or many, the way you structure your organization can make the critical difference between simply satisfied and overwhelmingly loyal customers. That significantly affects revenue and profit.

The best organizations deliberately make the most of their resources...in this case people. Winning companies define clear roles and responsibilities and their customers (internal and external) find them easy to work with. How about you? Does your structure make it easy, or difficult, to create loyal customers and get great results?

You can have outstanding people and motivate them toward action, but if structure restricts innovation and higher levels of productivity, improvements are temporary at best. Structure can either help or hinder your ability to react to the changing needs of the customers you serve. You cannot change the world in which you do business, but you can create a structure to best respond to your own market.

Definition

Structure is different from culture and different than process. Structure is about roles and reporting relationships; process is about rules and procedures; and, culture is about attitudes and behavior.

Culture influenced how your current structure evolved and will affect your ability to successfully implement changes.

A great tool for evaluating and improving your structure is a simple organizational chart. If yours is out of date or nonexistent, the exercise of creating it will be enlightening. Include relationships with outside suppliers, contractors and anyone else you count on to provide goods and services to your customers. Once the picture is clear, you can begin to see where you may be out of alignment and what stands between you and the ability to excel.

Assessment

In many organizations, a group of people creates strategy, another focuses on getting and keeping customers, another manages people, while still others run internal systems. At times, it may seem they are separated by walls ten feet high and ten feet thick because, even in small organizations, the right hand literally doesn't know what the left hand is doing. What is your inter-departmental strategy? Does it take an Act of Congress to get something done? How satisfied are employees with their ability to function and what impact does dissatisfaction have on client service?

Great indicators of mis-alignment are "work-arounds." When individuals bend or ignore standard reporting and decision-making procedures, it signals a problem. It's common to have people working at cross-purposes without even recognizing it. This leads to competition between individuals and functions, mis-allocation of resources, lost productivity, customer complaints, poor morale, duplicated effort, pass the buck mentality, absenteeism, employee turnover, stress, loss of clients, lower profit...have you had enough? Let's turn to solutions.

Alignment

The best thing for yourself, your organization and those you serve is a regular check up. The org chart is a great place to start. One of my long-time, favorite book recommendations is Michael Gerber's The E-Myth Revisited. Gerber popularized the phrase, "work on your business, not in it." Although written over a decade ago, the concepts are still strong, the message straightforward, and the lessons on systematizing your business are practical and applicable.

Whether it's been a few years or you've never read it, try reading it twice within a couple of weeks. The repetition will add to the value.

For additional insight into your own structure's effectiveness, professional organizational assessments range from simple to extremely complex. Once obstacles are identified, the solutions may not be hard to find.

Questions to Ask Yourself and Your Team

       ·      Are the right people in place to answer customer questions?

       ·       What is the response time for customer inquiries?

       ·       Are we flexible or burdened with bureaucracy and lengthy approval processes?

       ·       Is it easy or difficult to place an order?

       ·       Are invoices correct and easy to understand?

       ·       How do we react when we make a mistake?

       ·       Do departments work together smoothly or is there a silo mentality?

       ·       Are there measurements in place to determine if customer needs are being met?

       ·       What functions and activities add ZERO VALUE to the customer?

       ·       Are front line employees and contract service providers equipped to resolve client issues quickly?

BOTTOM LINE: DOES YOUR STRUCTURE ALLOW YOU TO DO THE RIGHT THINGS RIGHT? When the answer is no, it's an opportunity to increase revenues, customer loyalty and profit. The better you understand customer needs, wants, and expectations, the greater your ability to structure your organization to create a true competitive advantage.

 By Allison Darling, ManagementConcepts. All rights reserved worldwide.