(Big Idea: Double growth | same effort)

Businesses and people discuss growth – in formal meetings and casual conversations. Rare are the instances when a discussion about fixing leakages in a company comes up. No it is not about the leakage in the pipeline – it is a different type of leakage.

How does it work? Think about a boat or a ship with a leakage. What is the future if you do not stop the leakage? It will go down sooner or later.

Same is true for a business. Businesses with leakages will most likely face stalled growth and become less competitive over time. This is important; because leakages may not show any impact on balance sheet in short term. Chances are they will cease to exist in the long run.

How can this scenario be avoided?

Let us explore.

Leakages can happen at various fronts. We will discuss the major ones.

Opportunity leakages at company website

You will notice this sort of leakage on most of the business websites. Even after one decade into 21^st century, years of technological innovations and consumer research; websites lose the opportunity to collect information about visitors.

Sure there are tools that can tell you the number of visitors, from where they came, new and repeat visitors; but how to do you communicate to these visitors later — about a new product launch or update.

The simplest way is to provide them with an option to opt-in for a periodical newsletter. This simple change on your website — can give a persimmon asset to connect with your potential customers.

You may be a small business but even if one person subscribes to your opt-in newsletter every day, you will have 365 subscribers at the end of one year. Better if you aim high and go for more than one way of connecting with your existing and potential customers. Hints — social media, trade shows.

Time leakage

Long meetings are boring. Employees sit through them because they are supposed to and they may not have a choice. What are companies losing here? One of the most precious assets — we know it as TIME.

Some meetings are inevitable. But keep them to minimum and always have a start and end time to a meeting. Less time spent on meeting will mean more time spent on productive work.

See where else can you avoid time leakage. Can somebody may just switch on computers once in the morning and switch them off at the end of day. Reboot at times take a lot of time.

Can you create a no connectivity zone in your office? Call it Hack Zone or Creative Zone. Encourage people to work and create in this space. Let only focus be task at hand.

If your company has lots of sales people — give them a separate space for making calls — not open cubicles but enclosed spaces – with tools to record their progress.

People & Productivity

Companies may leak or lose talented and totally capable people. This happens when there is’

• Work-talent mismatch
• Lack of opportunities
• Focus of number of hours worked and not on productivity (this does not work with real talent)
• Absence of conducive working environment
• Difference between promise and reality
• Lack or reward — money, appreciation etc.

People may also leave in a perfect environment but avoid the scenarios discussed above to ensure that talent stays with you. It will mean time and money saved on finding and training new employee/s.

Knowledge

Companies lose important information when an employee leaves — information about a project or a customer. To avoid this always record knowledge accrued through interactions with a customer or during a project. It will be handy for a new person working on same project or working with same customer to move ahead fast.

It does depend on the size of the company. Whether you are big or small develop some kind of knowledge system. A CRM can help the company understand various stages of customer connect.

Hope you get the idea. Stop leakages and increase chances of success.

Where do you think business can stop leakages and grow fast?

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