Can Businesses, Not Just People, Have New Year Resolutions?
Organizations should consider setting their own New Year's Resolutions, here are three examples.
It has always been tradition around the world to start 2017 off with a new year resolution. The top 3 most commonly chosen are to lose weight; spend less/save more, and enjoy life to the fullest.
Any of these sound familiar? We all start the year off assessing how we can improve our lifestyles and get better at living our lives, it’s human nature.
But what about businesses we work in, it is not often you hear companies talk about resolutions. Probably because they have defined strategies and objectives that are clear goals to increase revenue and profit plus reduce costs, all very typical for most companies.
But if companies did take a look at themselves at the start of 2017 and assessed like we all do, considering questions like: how can we improve employee working lifestyles and look to give them the best opportunity to excel at their job, I would start by proposing the following 3 resolutions:
1. Become a Company of Information Activists
We all understand that we now live in a world shaped by data. This provides us with the potential to get closer to the customer than ever before. Employees are now being asked to make more data-driven decisions in the workplace, and it’s important to empower people within your organization with the right platform, so they can use this data effectively. By encouraging a culture of data analysis throughout the whole organization it will provide greater opportunities for employees to identify new trends and opportunities to feed back into the business for greater ROI. The more that people use analytics, the more value organizations will get from analytics.
2. Put Employees before Data
Selecting the most relevant and quality data sets are crucial when it comes to spotting trends and opportunities for your business. Put people before data and believe in your own understanding of your company and field of expertise. Data is only as good as the brain behind it and in a world overwhelmed by data: insight and expertise comes first. Ensure that the appropriate governance is put in place to make sure that data is used effectively to complement your creativity and everyday decisions.
3. Be Transparent
There is now no excuse to be unaware of what’s going on within your business – a single, consistent view can be easily achieved throughout all levels of an organization. A CEO can have access to the same granular insight and real-time knowledge as the sales team in the field. Having the same transparent view leads to greater collaboration across the business as different expertise can now come together using the same information. Collaboration leads to a different perspective, and knowledge sharing will help to achieve better decision making.
Would a New Year resolution for a company be exciting if they developed an organizational culture of not just living in, but working with and loving data? Sounds like a good resolution to me.
