Ten Lessons on Business Operations: Surviving Versus Thriving Businesses

In my experience coaching business leaders and mentoring their improvement teams on continuous improvement projects, I've observed key differences that define a surviving business from a thriving business. These differences are outlined in this post as the ten lessons.

Surviving companies often suffer from these limiting practices:

• Heroic Leadership: Power and decision-making are unshared.

• Lack of Vision Ownership: The team doesn't collectively own or drive the company's direction.

• Lack of Agile Strategy: Inability to quickly adapt and pivot to changing market conditions.

• Untapped Talent: Failure to fully utilis

  e the skills and potential of employees.

• Weak Stakeholder Engagement & Partnering: Poor collaboration with partners, including customers.

• Limited Thought Leadership: Weakness in negotiation and navigating complex scenarios.

• Neglect of Culture and Employee Value Proposition (EVP): Ignoring the internal environment that retains top talent.

• Inconsistent Operational Excellence Methodology: Lack of a standardised, continuous improvement approach.

• Unmeasured Cost of Negative Productivity: Ignoring the financial drain of inefficiency and poor morale.

• Lack of Lean Processes: Processes are bloated, inefficient, and wasteful.

This is why embarking on cost-cutting or retrenchment initiatives often doesn't work for these companies; instead, it kills them. The "bleeding" is internal, not external, and therefore cannot be solved by external measures.

Do any of these lessons resonate with you? What steps is your business taking to make the shift from survival to triumph?