SME Blog

Workflow using stickies

Most small companies act as a team rather than a machine. When a small business grows to a mid-sized business then workflow starts to become a serious issue.  Tasks will be naturally delegated and the business owner starts to become more detached from the everyday detail.  There is a danger point in losing control and inefficiencies can easily occur as it becomes more difficult to coordinate business processes.

If you can think of one process in your business that you particularly need to control and coordinate then it may be time to take the stickie test.  The stickie test is a keep it simple approach using small paper stickies.  As an example we will take the process of producing a report for a client.  On each stickie you need to put the step in the process and who is doing it.  In our example, we would have the following steps:

1.    Creating the report - Mr Creator
2.    Reviewing the report – Mrs Reviewer
3.    Second review of the report – Mr Signoff
4.    Delivering the report – Mr Signoff

We have defined the process steps and the order.  A quick look at the process and we can see there may well be some loops in the process where the work goes back to Mr Creator for amendments and changes.

You may well find your particular process is far more involved than our example, but just creating stickies as above will give a quick insight to improve a process and make it more efficient.

Project management made easy

If you have ever been involved in a SME project then the chances are you have used Excel.  For all the sophisticated project management tools available Excel has the advantage of being familiar and easy to use. 

Getting new users to learn project management software is a problem.  For the average person in a SME the regular job will still need to be done.  Placing the project on top will increase the time pressure.  Small wonder that the thought of learning new project management software is unappealing. 

For the project manager Excel is not the best tool.  There will be a constant round of emails to update tasks and the timeline created in Excel.  Different versions will be passed around and there is no instant view by the project team of the level of progress.

A good solution would be an online tool that organises tasks and creates the project timeline automatically.  All users are able to log on via the internet and the administrator can set the system to send automatic email reminders for tasks to be completed.  Once the task is completed the user logs into the system and clicks their task box to say it is completed.  All users then have an instant view of the progress to date. 

I've been looking for a system that will do the above AND be very easy to use.   Wrike is the closest I've seen (thanks for the tip Daniel).  It is not prefect, but it is very good.  It is extremely easy to use and if you're undertaking an SME project coming then it is well worth finding out more.

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The right people

Following on from yesterdays post here is some advice from entrepreneurs in the form of clickable slides courtesy of BusinessWeek.  The most popular advice is to get the right people and have adequate capital for the venture.  It's good to see that it backs up the post yesterday with some practical experience and that it places emphasis the importance of properly managing the financial side of the business.

Philip Woodgate

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How do badly managed companies survive?

Are you surprised by any of these three points below?

• Companies that perform well typically have good managers at all levels of the organisation;

• There is a solid link between how well managers adopt proven best practices and how well a company performs;

• Employees in better-managed companies are likely to experience a more satisfactory work-life balance.

The above are findings recently reported by the LSE in conjunction and McKinsey & Company on management practices and productivity.  The findings come from a survey of over 700 midsize manufacturing companies in the France, Germany, the UK and the US. 

Hopefully, there are not too many surprises at this stage, but what the report did show is that managers are normally more important than the industry sector in which a company operates, the regulatory environment that constrains it, or the country where it resides.  As Stuart Jones says in BusinessMatters :

"People are your most important asset" turns out to be wrong. People are not your most important asset. The right people are. 

How do so many badly managed companies survive?  The answer is due to competition - or lack of it.  In a typical situation, it is very difficult for a badly managed company to survive; it's tough enough for the well run companies.  However, if the competition is weak then the need for a well managed company becomes less.  Good examples would be small companies with particular niches, unique desired products and where geography is a factor (e.g. your shop is the only shop on the island).  This is all very well and good if you are in this group, but watch out as the competition always has a way of catching up.

Finally, you can find further information on the report from Egils Milbergs, which will be of particular interest if you are involved in a family owned business.

Philip Woodgate

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