By Younas Chaudhary
Focus on clear, written daily communications: People love to meet, greet, and take part in daily meetings but struggle and avoid sending follow up notes summarizing action items. This hurts the business. Decision-makers need timely and accurate information as they impact due dates, costs, items to do, timelines, and other major items. The failure to record meetings in writing causes tremendous loss of time and resources. Make clear, written daily communications a top priority, and encourage coworkers, managers, supervisors, vendors, consultants, brokers, and others doing business with the company to promptly follow up on all meetings.
Avoid and end unnecessary meetings: A hybrid workforce has increased online and face to face meetings with most ending with no real progress or action items. Your teams’ leaders, managers, supervisors, and coworkers should be trained to take notes and move meetings into action-oriented discussions with follow up written memos and notes. Stop wasting time on unnecessary meetings.
Watch your daily expenses and costs carefully: Watch all your expenses and costs conscientiously from labor costs to utility bills and other major costs and expenses. Be ruthless in accounting for every dollar that comes in and goes out and share it with all stake holders.
Preplan, run, and review weekly and monthly profit & loss (P&L) statement: It is important that coworkers, supervisors, and managers preplan, keep track of all costs and revenues, update daily, weekly, and run monthly reports and statements reflecting the profitability of each property, location, field, and business line. By staying on top of revenue and expenses and always reviewing, checking, and rechecking, you can take timely action to control and address issues wherever you are losing money and making money and timely share it with all stake holders. Remember, people and companies small and big go broke by overspending.
Make a task list, share it, and let everyone know about it: Have clearly defined goals and tasks for each month. Ensure that this gets communicated in writing to everyone on the team and is shared with all stake holders.
Build an inclusive culture: Ensure that all coworkers feel welcomed and included every day. Create a culture that genuinely respects and values everyone.
Respect deadlines: Alwaysbe proactive and deliver accurate and timely work product and financials as well as complete other tasks on time on or before the due date. Do not overpromise and underdeliver.
Lease empty buildings, keep wells online, sell timely products, ship your product: As the famous business writer, Seth Godin says, make sure you stop making excuses and ship the product or service on time. Otherwise, it will remain on the shelf and the world will never know about it! Do not wait for perfection, instead, use common sense, and get the stuff out to the end users. For us that means, keeping all oil and gas wells active and running with the least amount of down time, selling all monthly crude oil stock inventory at the end of each month, and rent vacant properties to increase cash-flow and share data with all stake holders.
Retention is key: Work habits have changed in the post-COVID era, and it is important to maintain a balance between workers’ needs and the company’s business goals. Strive to achieve a middle path where work-life balance can be accomplished, and the business can make profits. Ensure worker productivity by taking a balanced approach.
Stay Blessed.
Disclaimer
The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in this article are my own and do not represent the opinions of any entity with which I have been, am now, or will be affiliated. Further, I make no warranty regarding the accuracy or effectiveness of my recommendations, and readers are advised to consult other advisors as well as their own judgments in making business decisions.
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