An Austrian consultant, educator, and author Peter Drucker once famously said that “the purpose of organization is to enable common men to do uncommon things.” This may seem biased or overly enthusiastic, but they have a very solid foundation in reality.
Developed organizational structure allows higher levels of specialization (the spark that pushed the world economy from the middle ages to modern times), brings clarity to work relationships, cuts the time for finding items and relevant information, and optimizes the use of available resources. In short, a good organization gives workers a framework in which they can perform at their best with the tools they have available.
But, how to attain this high level of organization in the year 2021, where business landscape shifts and new technologies pop up with each passing day? Let us try to find out.
Start with the office space and storage
Yes, before we move to some more advanced concept, we first need to clear up the basics. Cluttered offices and storage spaces are poison for productivity, and they render any advanced concepts of organization worthless. How could you hope to reach some optimal performance when, according to recent research, nine in ten Americans admit that clutter at work has a negative impact on their productivity (77%), state of mind (65%), motivation (53%) and even happiness (40%)?
So, start your grand organizational journey by expanding and rearranging the storage space (using the vertical space can prove to be of much use), cutting down the number of paper documents, labeling tools, products, and documents, and keeping in-premise only the assets you need at the moment.
Write to-do lists for every employee for the next day
Or you can allow them to do that for themselves. World War II general Patton once declared, “Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do, and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.” He was spot-on – your employees are the ones who know their pace, and their productivity spikes the best. But, the point here is that everyone who enters the premises at the start of each new day needs to have a complete to-do list for that day.
To put it simply, to-do lists transform abstract goals into measurable and attainable tasks; they bring structure to the day and create a great sense of accomplishment. Also, your workers won’t have to keep up all of their tasks in their heads. They can simply refer to the list to see what they need to do next.
Speed up the processes with appropriate tools
This topic is undeletable since the number of tools that create a greater level of organization and speed up the vital business processes is endless. But, even if you are not willing to engage in such structural changes, there are ways to refine the tools you are already using. Let’s take, for example, Google Workspace that has by now become an industry staple.
The platform features tons of useful functionalities that easily cover all everyday SMB necessities but also features some flaws that are devastating for overall productivity. One of the most notable mentions would undoubtedly be the inability to share bulks of contacts between accounts (at the moment, you need to do that manually). A simple platform that allows you to easily share Google contacts would save your marketing team hours upon hours of productive time that would otherwise be spent on this tiresome chore.
Enforce “respond to email as soon as you open” rule
Emails are dreaded on all business instances all around the globe. They seldom bring any good news and usually hide long walls of texts that need tremendous time to be read and even more time to be replied to. What’s even worse, they are constantly arriving, and trying to manage them can leave you scatterbrained and destroy your productivity
Be as it may, emails are still the main pillars of business correspondence and failing to respond to them seriously promptly undermines the business organization.
The best compromise for this situation is to give your employees a couple of time-slots during their shifts when they can commit their full attention to the messages that have arrived and respond to them as soon as they are opened. The emails that require immediate attention should always be marked as “priority.”
Move to Cloud and automate whatever you can
When we talked about organizing your offices, we have mentioned that moving to Cloud will cut the number of paper documents and make some free room. However, Cloud computing is capable of delivering even greater benefits in the organizational sense. The digital Cloud documents are available for all and open for collaboration. They are accessed through a unified interface that doesn’t depend on the hardware or the OS platform. Finally, the software updates are distributed automatically to all end users simultaneously.
In short, Cloud computing is an organizational haven.
The benefits of automation are similarly obvious. Software platforms designed to take over the cumbersome daily chores like scheduling, auto-signatures, payrolls, and even some CR tasks can are far more efficient in tackling these tasks and feature a far lower error margin.
Outsource all non-essential departments
Last but not least, it should be mentioned that sometimes the best way to organize some tasks is not to do that at all. The success of one business depends on various activities and departments that are not essential to the core of that company’s productivity. We are talking about the sectors like HR, accounting, finances, etc.
Developing, organizing, and managing these departments in-house simply takes too much time, money, and other resources (e.g., real estate) that could be spent on more vital tasks. That is why we strongly suggest (especially if your small business is still developing and finding its place on the market) to outsource all these non-essential departments to the companies and professionals who have their organizational infrastructure already laid out.
We hope these few tips gave you some general idea of how to put your small business on a solid foundation and create an organizational framework that will allow your employees to achieve their optimal efficiency. Every day, the business world loses years of productive work, looking for something and wondering what to do next. The current business climate is too competitive to allow your company to be a part of this story. So, roll up your sleeves and turn your small business into a well-oiled machine that plows through the less organized competition.
