What I have dared to list out here is about those small signs that hint you of a failure just before the major ones of revenues dropping or market share reducing actually show up. I was able to dig deep and find these obvious symptoms.
- Most of your important & talented employees are leaving or already have left, though they don’t share the same reasons for leaving you. If these employees are the key to your organization, if they were the pillars then its obvious that moving ahead you will see the value of their function declining. The level at which these people are moving out will tell you the factor at which that function might go down by. The higher the level, the more you decline will see in terms of revenues.
- A screwed up hierarchy structure. Its understood that if your key people are leaving, the hierarchy gets messed up. Ensure you have the right people to replace them just in time to minimize the loss. Care should be taken, that the balance in the structure is maintained and that there are enough people to work. The ratios between employees and managers need to be taken care of, and this is primary else people at the bottom will also start to move out because of pressure.
- When you are promoting people for all the wrong reasons. The worst thing that you can do to an organization is to give the wrong person the job you have. Just because a trusted key employee leaves, don’t find another employee who is just trustworthy to replace him. Do so if and only if he has the skills to take up the job at hand immediately. If he has skills that needs 6 months of grooming, promote him when he is fit to take up the responsibilities (six months is a big time,you can go bankrupt by then).
- When you have more meetings than you have time for acting upon your decisions made in those meetings. This one is a clear symptom isn’t it. Running around meetings, the entire day planning to firefight makes no sense until you implement them. So make sure you act on your decisions and then review them.
What do you think are the signs that companies can use to identify and save themselves from a decline? Do you have something to add up to this list or against this list. Just drop in a Line. We will discuss them here for the world.