‍Optimizing your Company

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How do you drive success to your company? Most organizations think that they are already doing a good job and that there can be no room for improvement. Some companies don't even know what to do to optimize their business. Randy Silver, Director of Out of Owls, uses four principles to optimize companies and create a culture of success: People, Processes, Prioritization, and Perception. 

"You can't fix a problem if people don't perceive it as a problem in the first place." - Randy Silver
Are you hiring the right people?

People are arguably the most critical aspect of culture. If you are trying to create a culture of success, you have to have the right people. Most leaders make the mistake of hiring people who think and behave like them. Instead, they should be hiring people who can complement each other's strengths. Diversity is extremely important and has a direct impact on productivity. The more perspective you have, the more creative your team will be. 

However, having different people inside your team or company will create tensions and disagreements. According to Randy, healthy tension is good to have, with a baseline of respect and compassion. To achieve harmony, people will need to practice empathy and understand other people who view things differently. 

Do you have the right processes?

Having the right people is not enough. How are these people working is also another thing that you need to focus on? Some companies have too much process to barely have time to do the actual job they are supposed to do. Nobody is enjoying their work when this happens, no value is being created, and everyone is not hitting their goals. 

If you want to optimize your workflow, you need to start communicating with your team to identify the problem. You need to find out what is stopping them from actually achieving their goals. It works best if the team clearly understands the goals and why they are essential for the organization. Then you can ask how they are planning to do it so that you can support them in every possible way. 

Are you prioritizing properly?

Do your people know what to work on, and do they realize what's not important to the company? Just because you are doing something doesn't mean it's important. What's important is for everyone in the organization to know what are the things that should be prioritized so they can all work together in one direction. 

What you can do is map out your entire process from the top. Start from the Vision statement of the company and work your way down. What are the goals that you need to achieve that vision, and you will be able to see your organization's processes and what needs to be prioritized. This process will help you identify the workflows that you can stop altogether and the workflows you need to do first. 

Does everyone have a shared perception?

"Even if I thought that things are going well, if other people didn't share that perception, then we are doing a terrible job." - Randy Silver

The thing that ties everything together is perception. How does everyone perceives what you are doing in the company matters a lot? If everyone has the same perspective of what success looks like for the company, then they all have a reason to work together and prioritize the same things. 

Communication is key to everything. You need to articulate to everyone what you are doing, why you are doing it, what success looks like, and how everyone can contribute to that success. This is how you optimize your company for success. 

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