Your top line is impacted by a variety of friction points. Friction impacts the productivity of your people. Friction has a corrosive impact on your people.
Levels of friction determine business success. When companies grow to a certain size and then struggle one year or do a little better in a good economy and struggle in the next downturn, they are dealing with excessive friction.
Conversely, there is not a simpler way to raise profitability. You don’t have to hammer your vendors for price breaks. You don’t have cut costs to the bone. All you have to do is staunch the hemorrhaging lost through friction points.
So how can we spot friction?
First off lets identify some of the culprits on friction
1. Busy work within operational processes is a major source of friction. How well do your data sources share information? How easy is it to find critical strategic information when you need to make an informed decision? How much time is spent hand copying information from one location to another? How much time is spent searching and sorting through physical files?
2. Excess friction creates more ad-hoc problem solving – more time spent on daily emergencies – more running around and putting out fires. When leadership has more slack – there is a greater ability to see unproductive patterns and an ability to create processes to prevent as many fires. This is an example of friction compounding on itself.
3. Friction allows less time to clarify and act on strategic business objectives. The effect is to lose focus on key objective and scatter effort. Business activities can get out of alignment with smart strategy. This causes less productive behavior, more stress, more frustration and increased friction.
4. Communication is impacted by friction. As workload goes up to deal with friction- everyone’s head goes down and concentrates on busy work. Less time to actually implement change. More gut reaction rather than taking time to do a rational study and plan innovation. Strategic deadlines are passed over- strategic objectives are forgotten in the struggle to keep up.
5. This communication problem is exacerbated by technology. Enlightened leadership can ask for activities relevant to strategic activities
- team members can be getting key estimates and proposals out the door
- team members can be following up with prospects
- team members can be working on compelling content
- team members can be gathering pictures
- team members can be systematically interviewing key customers
- team members can be spending time building connects to strategic people
but friction and lack of focus can draw people back to work as usual- habitual busy work dictated by existing technology and work patterns. Strategic activities are squeezed out as we react to daily activities and the usual number of urgent yet less important activities. When we can reduce friction- when we can start to create systems that eliminate repetitive problems, we can concentrate on the strategic objectives more effectively.
- How do you post strategic objectives and keep people engaged with them?
- Do you have a dashboard or some system where the objectives are posted and a system ticks off time and holds people accountable? including you?
- Do you have a simple system that allows people to collect and share strategic information on a permanent basis?
- Or does your strategic information go into an email wastebasket where stuff stacks up waiting for attention until it falls off the page?
- and less than stellar focus on the objectives that really count. This is sort of philosophical and not really a friction point in itself, but a critical means by which friction points go unnoticed and, instead perpetuated.
6. Friction problem mostly impact leadership. If leadership isn’t out front leading- everyone else ignores the moments dedicated to strategic effort. Because it is a passtime not for real. Everyone is busy. Everyone watches out for their own work assignments. Everyone does what leadership holds them accountable for. When leadership is playing SMALL BALL everybody plays SMALL BALL.
People don’t do what you say- They do what you do. Where did Harry Truman Say the buck stops? I forget.
7. Friction causes deafness to that most melodious of music – employee complaints. Unfortunately, we get so bogged down in “really important stuff” that we become immune to feedback. This problem is often magnified by a personal belief in mythology. This type of mythology costs you money. However, employee complaints are often a good sign that your employees are under stress. When your employees are under stress it is costing you money. Are they asking you to spend money? Are they asking for a new solution? Do not instantly judge their motivation or the value of their idea. Their frustration is impacting their productivity in several ways. They have insights into the business you do not have because you do not do what they do. Make more money by stopping and listening. This is a critical step on the way to empowered employees.
The answer is you need more slack. You are pushing too hard. You need to relax and think some more. I know you can see the impact of friction on your business. You just need a little different perspective. You probably are more intimately aware of everything on this page than I. But there is a ring of truth here. There are some points that don’t seem to apply or are confusing. But the big picture makes sense. And the solution starts with finding yourself more slack.
8. So often companies are so busy keeping up with business as usual, they do not have time to be aware of changes in the marketplace. When companies are poorly focused on their marketplace, when they are not adjusting effectively, effort in not congruous with the challenges in hand. The lack of congruence creates excess friction and stress.
9. When companies do not have effective follow up systems for keeping in touch with prospects, they are operating under friction. Buyers buy in their own time. You can help speed that time up with compelling value added in a timely manner. If you do follow up systems well, they are thinking of you when they get ready to purchase. If you have done a poor job, your chances are smaller, you are making fewer conversions, fewer sales but working just as hard. This is the essence of friction.
10. When companies have poor data tracking systems, when sales data is strung across multiple platforms that are not interconnected- that do not allow leadership to see what is happening- you are suffering from the effects of friction. Traditional Contact tracking software is problematic. Contact tracking software must be in the cloud and sharable. Sales people can open new accounts and get credit for them, but management must have access to the account to be supportive and creative when needed. Note that I am not condoning old school sales management by harassment – sales and business development is a team sport and sales people are more productive when they are nurtured and their constraints are removed to allow them to take substantial action.
This is a prosaic list of tasks that only hints at the rich and diverse world of busy work. You need to go for a search within your own establishment for that fine flora called friction.
Busy work revolves around redundancies that can be eliminated without negatively affecting outcomes. In fact, freeing up your talent for a more productive, more substantial roles closer to the core income generators of the company, makes you money and makes your people happier.
So lets move on to reducing friction while dealing with risk. Imagine the money you can make here. Imagine the smiles on faces.
What comes to mind when you think about friction?
What are your personal experiences here?
What kinds of innovation have you seen or would you like to see to deal with friction?
Feel free to add your comments below.
Friction is interesting. It is just about the easiest way to get a pay raise.
Email or call me if you would like to discuss the concept of friction
