Anna Maria Richards2022 is certain to be a unique year, in more ways than one. With all the rapid changes, new approaches are called for. Innovation is taking major strides, with businesses following up as fast as they possibly can.
Basically, improving your company means brainstorming and setting up best practices, encouraging employee engagement, establishing stellar communication channels, improving business agility, considering hiring integrators, and using the proper apps and tools to simplify complex processes.
These are, at least, prerequisites.
Here are some ideas on how to get started.
1. Improve Your Agility
To improve your organization’s agility, you’ll need to think up a methodology to do a couple of things at once, notably to deliver value, maximize profit, and give the employees the freedom to make the most impact in their work.
Agility is commonly thought to be linked to startups alone, but that isn’t really true. A better formulation would be that startups are enforcing agility upon other businesses because innovation is developing rapidly.
Optimally, to introduce (and improve) agility, you should create smaller (and thereby more flexible) teams, as they will be able to make fast decisions and get access to necessary resources more easily than large teams (obviously because they use up fewer resources).
To create a basis for business agility, you should first establish a stable autonomy, create straightforward goals and communicate them clearly, create necessary roles, and maintain a positive and collaborative business culture.
2. Work on Your Marketing Techniques
The overall success of a business relies heavily on the success of its continual marketing campaigns. Even though the arena has shifted to the virtual space, the struggle is still real.
Statistics show that merely email marketing can render returns up to $36 for every $1 spent. That’s somewhat lower than pre-pandemic figures, which stood at around $44. Still, to be able to reach that sum, you’ll need to maintain stable email marketing management at all times.
Email marketing management brings together all aspects of a campaign — from devising a strategy to building an email list to handling subscriptions to tracking your campaign performance.
To be sure, it’s a lot of work, but there’s no avoiding it if you want to witness good returns.
Basically, the foundation of a successful email marketing campaign is proper targeting and personalization. Targeted emails have a higher chance of converting, and personalization will set your business apart from competitors.
For best results, it is crucial to use insights, announce promotions regularly, and cross-promote your products and services on social media.
3. Set Better OKRs
When it comes to sustainable and achievable goals, we’re talking about OKRs. To set OKRs successfully, you’ll need to understand what their aim is and brainstorm ideas and best practices.
OKRs are the acronym for Objectives and Key Results. Basically, it is a goal-setting methodology that enables individuals and teams alike to establish challenging goals with measurable results. Essentially, OKRs help you track progress and align the efforts, all the way encouraging collaboration and engagement around measurable, viable goals.
Typically, OKRs encompass one objective and three to five supporting key results, where an objective is the goal to be achieved, and key results are benchmarks that will help you reach the objective. To be efficient, key results need to be realistic, highly specific and have set deadlines.
4. Create a Better Environment for Frontline Employees
Next on, you should make every effort to create a better environment for frontline employees and keep them engaged. There are various approaches to achieving these aims, the most important of which we’ll mention hereby.
First of all, it is crucial to keep informed at all times and keep your business competitive. To do this, always follow up with small business trends.
Presently, the trends include, but are not limited to:
Presently, main field service management trends include:
- IoT for asset management
- Cloud-based software for remote work
- Artificial intelligence for business automation
- Inventory management software for supply chains
- Other trends may also come to mind, too, so stay tuned for the developments
Finally, you’ll need to establish proper and efficient field service management procedures, which should be communicated clearly and followed through.
5. Look Into Integrator Services
Last but not least, consider looking into integrator services. Integrators are experts with specific skill sets who deploy differentiation and integration across the board.
The best integrators are natural-born leaders capable of executing the business plan, are accountable for the profit and loss results, and know how to provide cadence. Integrators must be fully familiar with the business vision, dynamics and functions, and be capable of leading all these procedures.
How to find the right integrator, then?
Basically, ideal candidates should possess the following:
- Industry-compatible skill sets
- Familiarity with the company’s core values
- Capability to bring forth new perspectives
- Able to present innovative ideas
- Familiarity with the latest leadership trends
- Willingness to provide solutions to fill the gaps in business procedures
- Capability to pinpoint errors in business procedures
- Ability to bring a positive challenge to the board
The traits you should look for in an integrator include:
- Decision making
- Business and data analysis skills
- Situational leadership skills
- People management skills
- Performance assessment skills
- Contribution skills
Key Takeaways
To improve your company in 2022, you should rethink your goals, set OKRs, polish your marketing strategy, improve operational agility, and consider overall integration and differentiation.
That may be a lot of items but running a successful business has never been easy, so make sure to stay up-to-date with the latest leadership trends and developments.
Don’t forget to offer continuing education on soft skills, and establish proper communication channels to drive employee engagement. You can always rely on anonymous feedback for concrete ideas.
Last but not least — don’t forget your frontline employees. They may feel left behind at times, especially if you hire remote teams. Familiarize yourself with the latest trends and make an effort to create a better environment for frontline employees to keep them engaged.
