Many small businesses struggle with efficiency. They are at a disadvantage compared to large organizations, which have teams of experts constantly looking for ways to boost efficiency on a large scale. They also have more funding to experiment and can afford higher wage consultants to make sure that their business is running as smoothly as possible. Small businesses don’t have that.

What small businesses do have is a well-trained manager and the flexibility to play to whatever strengths they have. What many business owners don’t realize is that any size business can benefit from these methods to boost their efficiency. So without further ado, here are 2 simple ways to make your business more efficient.

Introduce Habit Cycles To Your Workers

I am reading Charles Duhigg’s The Power of Habit, which is a must-read for any business owner and really anyone who is interested in building skills and efficiency. In this book, he has a chapter dedicated to businesses, and how the introducing habits help companies grow.

Think about something your workers have to do every day. In a cafe, for example, that’s brewing coffee, doing customer support, or making a drink. Each of these processes gradually becomes a habit. You’re able to do it without thinking. But you can turn these processes into a science.

Take one task and break it down into steps. Find a way to do them that take as little time as possible without simply rushing the task. You’re looking for ways to sequence tasks by minimizing as much wait time as possible. Waiting for a blender to finish? You can be starting another drink. Waiting for coffee to brew? You can clean the counter. Anytime there is downtime, have something specific for your employee to do.

You just created a habit cycle. A list of steps that everyone can learn to maximize efficiency. It’s going to be slow at first. Building habits take time. But eventually you will find your efficiency skyrocketing, and as a bonus, your employees become easier to evaluate.

Delegate Tasks

When creating these habit cycles, you also want to assign specific tasks to specific people. You can have one person on the product, one restocking supplies, and one on PoS. Notice that this setup changes one of the biggest time-wasters in the industry. Running to the back to grab more supplies while making something else.

By having someone dedicated to making sure the front is stocked, the store is clean, the trash is empty, etc., you save so much time for your people up front who are able to help your customers much faster.

This applies to all businesses as well. Having a team each with their own responsibilities makes it a lot easier to know who is responsible for what, and who to contact for what information.

Let’s say there are 3 people in your business. That’s a lot of tasks to delegate to three people, but you can divide it between finance, marketing and customer relations, and product creation. That alone will save you business from potential disaster and gives you a framework you can grow from.

Conclusion

Creating habits and delegating specific habit-cycles to specific people will make your business as efficient as it needs to be so that you can be a strong contender in the world of business. You might find that organizing your business might be very difficult, and you might need some help delegating certain tasks and making sure your business is organized.

A great way to further boost efficiency without hiring full time staff is by working with one of our administrative assistants. These folks are experts in making sure your business is as efficient as it needs to be, and we can handle all the small tasks so that you can worry about your more important responsibilities.