I received the following comment a few days ago. This question hits on a lot of interesting topics pertaining to management, damage repair and marketing.

Because the comment touches on so many important points on running a small business, I felt it best to address the question in a post.

hi,

please help me out. I run a private school which has grown to two hundred pupils a few years back.But decline set in when I enrolled for a masters degree in International relations.(full time) Ihad to leave running the school in the hands of my staff while pursuing the programme.

However by the time I completed the degree programme,the population has greatly declined. All effort made ever to revive this school has not yielded the desired result.

please help me out

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Hi Ayo,

First things first–what specifically caused your current student base to dwindle? While I understand that you weren’t there to supervise, there had to be specific reasons for your students to leave your school. This might reveal some bad press your organization might have received and is something you should address immediately.

Before even worrying about how to regrow your student base, you need to fix what had caused your students to leave in the first place. If you can’t fix this problem, you can’t expect new students to stick around that long, either.

Secondly, in order to rebuild your student population (once fixing whatever problem had caused them to leave) you should do some research to determine the best practices for marketing in your industry and do your best to follow those recommendations.

Finally, your school should be able to run without you. If it can’t, chances are this is because you are directly involved in too many of the day to day operations of the school.

If for example, every decision needs to go through you (instead of an assistant to you), this creates a huge bottleneck in your organization and will really hamper productivity.

I suggest you set up systems where most of the school’s operations can work without you. By systems, I mean setting up specific, written policies and procedures for the day to day operations of your business. This way, instead of your staff having to rely on you and ask for permission, they can simply consult the policy guidebook on how to handle a specific situation.

While I can’t suggest specifics for you, you MUST read the book: E-Myth Revisited, by Michael Gerber. The entire book is dedicated to setting up systems in your business so your organization can run without you. It is a must read for any business owner, and if you follow only one piece of advice of mine, read this book.

Best of luck!

Are you rolling out a change or new initiative in your company? Don’t even think about starting a change process without completing these steps.

Start with a plan

Any change you want to get rolling, whether it is a change in strategy, policy or when changing systems, must come with a well thought out plan.

If you don’t have a plan before beginning the change process, the expenses for your change effort will increase rapidly. Chances are, you will also find that your efforts will not be accepted among your staff and may ultimately fail.

Get everyone involved

The key ingredient to change effort success is your team. You want as much brainpower behind a new initiative as possible.

If you want people to accept a new initiative, you must make sure they are involved in the planning, decision making and implementation. By keeping your staff involved, you will ensure they support your efforts.

Why is getting your staff’s acceptance important for change to occur? If your staff does not support new methods, they will stick to old practices, rendering your change effort useless.

Continually reinforce why the change is important

Not only do you need to get your staff to embrace change through keeping them involved, you also need to communicate to them why the change is so important.

If your staff fails to understand this simple fact, they will never see the importance of your new strategy, and cling to old practices.

Implement change

Now comes the hard part. This is where behavior, practices or systems must actually be changed. You must stick to your plan, keep your staff involved and actively working so the implementation is a success.

Expect hiccups

Hope for the best but plan for the worst. Chances are, you will run into problems during the beginning stages after a new initiative has been rolled out.

A system may not work as expected, a new strategy is proving more costly, or employees might not be adhering to new policies. Whatever the issues are, you will be at a severe disadvantage if you don’t plan for these setbacks.

Brainstorm possible issues that could arise and plan for contingencies.

Any other best practices for change implementation? Comment below!