While you’re liable to find many ways that successful businesses overlap, there are a handful of best practices that they all seem to follow.
From effective goal-setting to retaining smarter advisory services, some of the strongest startups and veteran businesses alike use a similar strategic plan.
Whether you’re a burgeoning small business looking to grow or a seasoned professional that needs to course-correct, here’s what you need to know.
Cover your key results
Chances are you’ve likely heard of OKRs before. OKRs—or objectives and key results—are part of a goal-setting framework that can benefit almost every business owner. From consultants and advisors to core team members, it’s critical that everyone is aligned with a business’s strategic objectives.
There are plenty of ways to achieve common goals; enhanced performance management, greater financial insights, and a way to increase productivity are often near the top of these lists. However, each business owner should consider integrating OKRs softwareinto their small business.
OKRs software can track useful metrics like employee engagement, employee data, alignment on goal progress, and more. It can help you take the insights from employee engagement surveys and turn them into actionable performance management benchmarks for both individual objectives and company goals.
Typically, when engineering OKRs, you’ll reassess key results on a quarterly basis. This goes for large enterprises and small businesses alike. So, what are your key results? Higher profits? Complete alignment on core values? Whatever your key results and strategic objectives may be, a software platform can help you achieve them.
Know when to delegate
Many times, it’s easy to feel more like a superhero and less like a business owner. Sometimes, you just want to do it all. Small businesses and larger corporations both struggle with delegation at times. Unfortunately, it’s probably physically impossible for you to juggle running an accounting department, coaching team members, balancing onboarding accounts, and updating your menu of services. This is where outsourcing can play a large role.
Especially if you’re running a small business, you simply won’t have the time or manpower to do everything solo. For many startups, managing financial reports, in particular, becomes troublesome. Outsourcing accounting services and bookkeeping services can help you keep all your financial information and accounting processes buttoned up.
So, if you’re spending money on outsourced accounting firms, how do you make up for that? Well, by not having to be the CPA, CFO, bookkeeper, and account managers all in one, you can easily increase productivity for all team members. If you pair this with an advisory firm that can guide you on key decisions and find what solution drives employee participation, you’re going to find yourself focusing more on growing your business and less on navigating clunky accounting software.
Invest in your employees
If your workers are just living for their biweekly payroll check, you’re going to quickly spot issues with employee engagement. You may even get some strongly-worded employee engagement surveys. Ramping up employee engagement helps to reduce turnover, builds employee loyalty, and helps ensure that your team members are operating at their most productive.
Sometimes, this can be achieved through a boost in their financial statements. However, engagement needs to be developed through workplace culture as well. Often, performance management software can help you identify and foster strengths while effectively reducing weaknesses. Ultimately, though, your employees need to want to come in every day.
Between choosing an outsourced accounting firm for their accounting services and selecting an OKR software platform, you may feel a bit overwhelmed. However, to hang with the best entrepreneurs, you have to push yourself to be one of them, too. Your business will thank you in the long run.
