Every business has inherent characteristics, which can be harnessed, developed and amplified to become the major selling points and value offerings of the business. This is one of the several important roles that a business or organisational coach can play in helping a business to set and achieve specific goals. This will be especially in relation to its vision, resources, opportunities and market orientation.
What the coach will also help to achieve is set the basis for the leveraging of the best assets of the business. This will invariably involve the leveraging of the business on practical systems. This is the process of business systemisation, which enables the business to practically engage and utilise the available knowledge, networks and strategies that have been developed within the system to gain comparative advantage.
The main aim of leveraging a business on well-developed systems is of course to ensure that standards are maintained, thereby guaranteeing customer reliability and loyalty. However there is the need for everyone in the business to adequately understand the essence of systems leveraging. It is that lack of understanding and active adaptation of the business systems that acts as a continuous drawback to the move of several businesses for systemisation.
Systems and resource leveraging simply mean that the business is able to make its systems and its resources go so far in bringing in more money. They also amplify the business prospects, and cause the business to become like a well-oiled and automated machine. This can be facilitated through coaching, as the coach works with the business owners, managers and top leaders to develop and implement strategies that will amplify the strength of the business to the point of excellence. It will at the same time help mitigate the weaknesses of the business through value-adding partnerships.
Coaching in this regard helps to bolster team leaders’ personal energy (passion, enthusiasm, tenacity etc.) as a bulwark against possible business frustrations and confidence threats. This is very important because there are instances when a business runs through really difficult times, that it would take pure tenacity for leaders not to make serious business errors and risk massive losses. Competency of a business leader is one thing, but composure, clear-mindedness and confidence in tough times is an entirely different thing. This is the time that coaching is needed to boost the adversity quotient within the system. This is also the time that system leverages are most useful.
The benefits of a good business system to leverage upon in this regard cannot be overemphasised. This is because such systems are expectedly built and developed around the key components of the business. Such key components include: product/service attributes; staff development cultures; customer/client service operations; production standard of excellence; technical operations; pricing strategies; and marketing strategies, among others.
These are best developed through a SWOT Analysis of the business on the one hand; and a SWOT Analysis of its possible competition, on the other hand. From the SWOT Analyses carried out, you would then need to develop the areas of your greatest strengths and opportunities as areas upon which to build your uniqueness. This is especially to assure comparative advantage over the perceived weaknesses of your competitors.
The second important strategy in building business systems is to seek complementary businesses to help shore up the deficiencies or weaknesses in your business. It would then be easier to build your business systems to reflect these areas of uniqueness. It is also more realistic there from to seek to develop the personnel in the business to understand and further develop those areas as well. Once that is confirmed, the next strategy would be to involve the other people that are involved in the business, such as your partners, customers, casual contacts, and other networks, each one being developed to become realistic ‘brand carriers’.
In reality, the most sustainable plan for business systemisation is for the business owner to purposely develop an exit strategy. This is what would necessitate and motivate him to seek to build systems around his people and not just around himself. The power of this is that the business owner that invests in his people in this manner can get the people to also understand, appreciate and love the systems being built. This is largely because the systems, being centred around them would definitely be in resonance with their own personal values and goals.
If you are a business owner and/or entrepreneur, my challenge to you is that your business must not ‘employ’ you any longer than you want. You therefore need to have a strategy that puts the business on autopilot as soon as possible, so that you can run your business instead of your business ‘running’ you. Let me reiterate that the best business systems are those based on the shared vision and values of primary stakeholders of the business. You can read more about the transformational power of coaching at www.ceedcoaching.com.
Emmanuel Imevbore
