Note: Running Fridays in FromGregsHead.com, is a continuing series of tips brought to you by Greg Price. These run Sunday evenings during the BusinessMaker’s Radio Show on KPRC 950AM. Audio files can be found on the PKF Texas – Entrepreneur’s Playbook® page of the PKF Texas website.
Many business executives find the world they work in overwhelming with information. Most of the folks I talk with say it’s like drinking from a firehouse. But is it the right information, at the right time? Most would say no on both counts. So if you are not sure about your information, ask yourself these key questions from a recent survey by IBM on productivity:
1. In which of your processes and systems is flexibility most important?
2. Or stated another way, where is rigidity and slow reaction time frustrating your customers or providing more nimble competitors an opening?
3. How many innovative ideas never surface because it was simply too difficult or too expensive to bring the right people together?
4. How much does it really cost your organization to have inquiries and requests sitting in voicemail and e-mail inboxes, slowing orders, interrupting supply chains and delaying customer service?
5. Which work processes are prone to have lengthy e-mail exchanges that often could be addressed through a quick electronic chat?
6. Which business processes still involve manual integration of information? Which use dated information?
7. Which important decisions could be improved and accelerated if more current, integrated information and more sophisticated, automated analytical support were available?
It’s true that work has become more complicated, but many of the factors that make it so also offer tremendous opportunity. More information is available from more sources. Specialized expertise can be just a click away. Sophisticated software can do more of the hard work by integrating, automating, highlighting valuable insights and preventing costly oversights. The possibilities are there; but to realize their upside, companies must have a plan, a strategy for how they will design their organizations and business processes to take advantage of these capabilities and act on the new insights they produce.
In a world that is increasingly instrumented, interconnected and intelligent, work is becoming decidedly more exciting and productive.