Want to Make Your Business Thrive?

Not Just Surviving, But Thriving

As a consulting group, our goal at Philantech3 is to help businesses thrive through automation and efficiency. This raises the question of what thriving looks like for an organization. One of the biggest challenges that we have as leaders is recognizing gaps or problem areas. We can look through the financials or get a certain feeling when walking through the office, but how can we really know if a business is performing well?

Useful Tools

If you’ve ever laid awake at night worrying about the future of your company, or wondering what’s going to pop-up tomorrow at work, here are a couple of leadership tools that will help identify and fix problem areas before they can cause serious damage.

SWOT Analysis

One of our favorite tools is the SWOT analysis. This is a simple diagram used to brainstorm Strengths, Opportunities, Weaknesses and Threats. A SWOT analysis can be done at the company and team levels of your organization. Involve team members. Get their feedback and suggestions.

4 Helpful Lists

According to a recent article, only 15% of employees are engaged at work. The other 85% are not significantly contributing. Imagine the power getting your team members engaged and active in moving the business objectives forward. One tool that we find useful for increasing employee engagement is the “4 Helpful Lists” popularized by StratOps.

We will often set this up through a Google Form survey to send out to the team. It goes like this:

1. What is Right? (we are asking what our team loves about working here)
2. What is Wrong? (look for common problems)
3. What is Missing? (be ready to take some notes here. Some of the best ideas come from team members that are working in the system)
4. What is Confusing? (we are looking for training or clarification opportunities)

If you run this tool in your organization, be ready to make some changes. For example, if you have 50 employees and 40 of your “What is Wrong” responses identify a similar problem, this IS a problem in your organization and as a leader, you’ve just been given the gift of knowing what to focus on. When you address these problems, do it visibly and report back to your team. One of the greatest causes of disengagement is when our team members give up trying to fix a problem. As leaders we can quickly build trust by opening lines of communication, listening, and then working to solve problems. The problems uncovered might be big and take significant time and energy to solve, but the bigger the problem, the more important it is to get started on right away.

For more information, here is an article that dives into 12 statistics about the importance of employee engagement.

Guidance with Your Business Technology

How is your technology aligned with your business profitability?  At Philantech3, we provide a full selection of managed IT services to small businesses. Meeting the technology needs of our clients and doing philanthropic work in the community allows us to support our neighbors in as many ways as possible. Small businesses and non-profit organizations are the backbone of our community. Now more than ever, we want to do all we can to support each other so we can continue to make a difference, strengthening our city in the months and years to come. If we can help your business thrive, please reach out for a free consult to solve your IT problems.

Like this article? Check out the following blogs to learn more:

How an IT Strategic Plan Becomes Your Competitive Advantage
Align Your Company’s Technology and Business Strategy to Deliver Powerful Results
How To Defend Against Falling Victim To A Ransomware Attack

Wil Buchanan

With an undergraduate degree in Applied Management, a graduate degree in Business Administration and as a doctoral candidate in Organizational Psychology, let’s just say that business and leadership are Wil’s passions! He is also a small business owner who understands the rigors and joys of business building.