Though the economy is rumored to be improving, many of my clients still struggle when it comes to staffing. If they’re lucky, headcount has remained flat. For some, job requisitions need justification and a blessing from the C-suite to be considered. For others, positions have been frozen, or worse, eliminated entirely. So the challenge is how to do more (and do it better) with limited resources.
Don’t rest on your org chart.
First up, don’t rest on your existing org chart. Take a look at how your group is structured within the context of the company at large. Evaluate how the people on your team are organized and how their talents match-up to the demands of the business. If there’s overlap, eliminate it. If there are gaps, fill them. Make sure your people are deployed in such a way that redundancy is reduced and performance is optimized.
Eliminate WOT projects.
When it comes to productivity, there’s never been a better time to eliminate wasteful steps in your processes—especially if “more with less” means doing things faster. That goes for non-value-added work as well. Several of my clients have taken steps to eliminate what they call WOT or waste-of-time projects. (The fact that it has a name, never mind an acronym, is telling.) The key is to keep non-value-added work from creeping back in when the checkbook re-opens. If it’s not worth your time in today’s economy, it’s not worth your time.
Organizing resources, analyzing processes, and questioning the merits of the work is essential to ensure that you’re adding value and delivering results in any economic climate. It’s not about doing more with less, per se; it’s about doing all you can with all you’ve got.
