4. Focus on Process when you are confident that you have a product that sells and that you can deliver and satisfy your customer. By ‘Process’, I mean organisational charts, job descriptions, processes, procedures, policies, IT system, and  CRM systems. In this phase you consolidate what you have; you organise things internally and clean up your mess, Kaizen 5s. By this stage, you and your staff have tried various ways of producing and delivering value and you now know who does what in your company, and how.

It is therefore time to document everything that is happening in your company, to put order in place. This helps you and your current employees to better understand how things are being done in your company and to become more efficient. Having these Systems in place also makes for an easier and more efficient process when you bring new people into your organisation. You have ‘machinery’ that works, effectively and efficiently.

If you think of your industry as a pyramid, there is only one company on top, a few on the second layer, then the third, and so on… until the bottom, where you find plenty of companies. Your objective is to get as close as possible to the top.

Why? Because if anything destructive happens in the economy or in your industry, or if anything happens that can adversely affect your business, you hardly feel it if you are on top. The crisis resulted in so many companies going bankrupt or being close to bankrupt – this is because they were at the bottom of the pyramid in their niche. If a tsunami comes, or the Council needs to do construction on the road in front of your shop or office, you need to be in such a strong position that your business does not suffer.

After Processes are in place, you need to focus on Innovation if you want to take your company to the next level, in which case you go back to Sales in another growth cycle Trust is taking care of itself after this point.

The next question is ‘When and how do I move from one area to another?’ Sign up to receive tips and tricks about successful business and The Process Guru will help you grow your business!