Is your Business Due a Spring Clean?
We’ve all heard the term “Spring Cleaning”. It conjures up an image of clearing the clutter and physically cleaning rooms in your home or office.
For your business, spring cleaning is really a time to reset, reorganise and improve productivity. Of course, you don’t have to wait for a particular season to revisit processes, systems, culture or goals, but if you want a place to start, Spring is as good a time as any.
It starts with your mindset
The most important place to start is with your own personal mindset. Use a journal or whiteboard, some sort of a visual format, to consider the following.
First, create a mental inventory of the current and future activities you have planned as well as those activities that you want to do in the future. Use colour cues (post it notes, pens) to identify which of these activities are vital and really matter to you and your team. If there is something on your inventory that doesn’t have a particular purpose for future improvement or offers no ongoing value to your business, you might consider striking it though and stopping it.
Your inventory of activities is going to identify some “Big Rocks” that will require immediate or imminent action. These priorities may also have multiple steps and require you to employ new resources or personnel. Consider breaking up these ‘Big Rocks’ into manageable pieces that are easier to accomplish and organize.
Finally, this inventory, map or chart needs to be revisited regularly so you and your team stay on track. This is where group goal setting and aligning your KPI’s can help to keep the whole team focused on the reset priorities.
What’s next on the list?
“Clearing out the clutter helps us prepare to enjoy the warm and hopefully productive months to come” (Stillman, 2019)
Once you have decluttered your mind and re-organised the direction of your business, it’s time to take further steps to thoroughly “spring clean” your business, and you can focus on a few key areas.
- Ecommerce, Online, Digital Footprint
- Operations
- Physical Space or Plant
- Customer Experience and Point of Sale
There are some other areas you can focus on to thoroughly spring clean your business.
- Consider automation & digitising– This will help you speed up processes by making some of the steps automatic. Digitising processes can help you store documents or resources in a more efficient way
- Audit all activities & question processes– Remove redundant or unnecessary activities that slow down or add no value to the customer experience
- Review neglected areas– Where you have had limited resources in the past, is might be time to reallocate resources or perhaps consider eliminating the area if your business altogether if it isn’t going to benefit from it in the near future
- Freshen up & consolidate customer facing documents– Ensure your customers are getting the most up to date materials that best position your brand and business
- Review staff members and job roles– This will ensure you have the right person in the right seat in your business, and ideally you’ll be using each team members’ skills to the full
- Examine, reorganise, or consolidate your inventory– Ensure older or outdated inventory is handled correctly and that you have sufficiently forecasted inventory you will need in the future
- Declutter spaces & deep clean– This will help you establish a clean slate for your business. Looks at every area of your business from the customer’s perspective to see what they see
You could also take the opportunity to refresh uniforms, marketing materials, social media accounts, and any area of your business that might need a little sprucing up. Consider reorganising the physical space and looking at your work area from the customer’s perspective. What does your customer see that they don’t need to see or shouldn’t see? Review post it notes, plaques and other things that may have accumulated over time. Now is the time to refresh or remove them as needed. Replace dull light bulbs. Clean off old tape or adhesive from windows. Don’t forget to clean the outside of your business as well; refreshing landscaping, signage and even repainting car park lines.
“Even if you do a good job of maintaining a clean office space, sometimes cleaning up around you can help you clear your mind — which is essential as a small business owner. When you run into problems or you are feeling overwhelmed, rearranging and cleaning your office space can help you feel more calm, clear, and able to find solutions” (Germanos, 2019).
Germanos also recommends repainting, adding plants, cleaning air filters, checking or replacing batteries in smoke/carbon monoxide detectors, fire extinguishers and updating posted licenses and permits. These steps help make your office or space more liveable. It can help to improve both your staff morale and your customer experience.
Take your Spring clean to another level
If you really want to go all out with your clean up then you could review and refresh the following areas…
- Marketing strategies
- Business goals
- Mission or vision statements
- Segmenting client lists
- Your financial position
“Giving your small business a good spring cleaning is a great way to ramp up the energy and realize more success” (SeeGirlWork, 2018).
The depth of your spring cleaning should be focused on improving customer experience and improving profits.
If you’d like some guidance with “Spring cleaning” your business at any time during the year, why not book a free discovery call with me?
