It’s difficult to take a long, hard look at your own work to determine what’s working and what’s not. But it’s an important part of business management and an important step in the 60-minute business plan. Without a status check, you’ll never know what to keep, stop, and start doing.
Consider identifying your business’s strengths and weaknesses to create change in the following ways:
- Keep doing this: Identify your strengths so that you can be sure to keep using them.
Consider your company’s employees, departments, structure, finances, customers, service quality, and reputation.
In what ways is your work somewhat or significantly better when compared to the local competitors?
What positive feedback have you heard from colleagues, customers, or the community? Lean into these strengths and be sure to strengthen them all the more. - Stop doing this: Identify your weaknesses so that you can be sure to minimize them. Consider the same company components listed above. But ask yourself: In what ways is your work average or below average when compared to key performance indicators?
What constructive — or unconstructive — criticism have you heard? Share these weaknesses with your team and commit to a collective, concerted effort of reducing weak areas. - Start doing this: Take a weakness, apply a strength to it, and voilà: You’ve got an opportunity. If you have a number of new employees, for instance, consider that an opportunity to start a new training or mentoring system. Use HVAC Learning Solutions
to connect with ongoing opportunities for training, coaching, and more.
Change can only come from clarity. So clarify for yourself and your team what your
strengths and weaknesses are in order to take the appropriate steps toward change.
Mike Moore offers HVAC advice for managers, technicians, and sales teams daily on Facebook, Twitter and his blog.