2009 was a season executives performed cut, cut, cut type of economic measures and hopefully your business wasn’t one of the many that died from self-inflicted 1000 cuts. Gruesome? Many businesses went under more because of their arbitrary across the board cuts bleeding them to death than the actually down economy. This year will also be an economic challenge as we all need to get more for less out of our businesses. Be a leader and don’t die at your own hand. Remember, you must avoid cutting your own throat when trying to get more for less.
Look into the details
The easy road is to do the simple stuff many companies do. Across the board cuts, wage freezes and slice and dice the budget. This is where you can cut your own throat. What if you need more personnel to properly run your department? What if cutting your marketing dollars removes more revenue than you saved by not advertising? What if you best talent decides to bail because of a second year of wage freeze?
Study the details of your organization looking for cost saving opportunities. What services are you outsourcing you could bring back in house using your staff? What tasks can be streamlined? Are you getting your employees involved in finding better and more cost effective ways to perform tasks? Could you do a better job of scheduling people for peak customer times?
Take each department of your organization and explore ways to make improvements without cutting deeply into profit-producing opportunities.
Have a plan
During difficult economic times a tight strategic plan is more critical than ever before because every meeting, every dollar, even step must be made in the positive direction toward accomplishing goals. When I see organizations missing the marks they set to achieve for the year and then use the excuses of the economy, how hard they worked to get what they did get, or how they did the best they can under the circumstances, I see an organization that is off the path.
Define your targets, your action items to reach those targets and set a timeline for each step along the way. Accountability is the easiest choice to get more for less. How accountable are you holding your executives to their responsibility of reaching their targets?
Put away the knife
Why do companies cut budgets instead of focusing on finding the additional revenue to meet the budgets? Because reducing costs is always easier than finding more revenue. Who said it was supposed to be easy? The job of every company is to make profits and grow the business to extend the longevity of the organization.
Stop the cutting mentality and spend more time finding additional opportunities to grow your business. Are you looking for more for less this year? I suggest you focus on the more and dedicating fewer days to figuring out the less.
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