There are commercial managers who believe that by fully controlling every business process they will ensure their company’s success. However, this approach may prove ineffective and even hinder business development.
Why it is important for managers to focus on results
Controlling every business process is extremely time-consuming for a manager. By focusing on performance rather than on processes, they can free up time for strategic planning, business development and team management.
A manager can concentrate on the company’s general goals rather than on the minute details of every task, which can be delegated to other employees or the quality control department.
For example, it is not necessary for a manager to control account executives’ phone communications with clients, or document drafting. These jobs may take much time, especially in a big corporation. Plenty of speech analysis services can handle the task wonderfully.
How micromanagement damages motivation
Controlling every step of one’s subordinates, or micromanagement, can result in workers’ resentment and loss of motivation. When a manager trusts their team and focuses on results, employees feel valued and responsible for their work, which boosts their motivation and productivity.
When staff is constantly watched by their manager, workers often limit themselves to complying with regulations to avoid penalties and are not interested in handling their tasks more effectively or showing high performance.
For example, when a designer creates a publication layout, it should be important for the manager to evaluate the concept, quality and appeal rather than ensure that project completes all approval stages.
There is no need to micromanage and oversee every step of the layout creation process. Instead, focus on assessing its value and effectiveness in terms of design and the product’s objectives. Prioritizing process over results is not ideal.
The importance of employee self-control
- Professional responsibility: Self-control enables employees to be more aware and accountable in their work, as they recognize that their individual efforts directly impact the company’s overall success.
- Efficiency: Self-control fosters a more organized and productive work environment. Employees with strong self-control are better at managing their time, prioritizing tasks, and meeting deadlines.
- Motivation and autonomy: Self-monitoring empowers employees with greater autonomy in their work. This autonomy enhances their motivation to achieve goals and adapt to changes.
Decentralized control and a focus on self-control foster more flexible and adaptive business development. They encourage local initiatives, boost employee motivation and professional responsibility, and enable quicker responses to external changes.
However, it is crucial not to allow all business processes to operate without oversight. As a company grows, maintaining rigorous quality control becomes increasingly important.
Consequences of lacking quality control
Implementing quality control is crucial for managers to focus on strategic tasks rather than micromanaging processes. Unfortunately, many Russian companies have not established control standards, leading to several negative outcomes:
- Inefficient use of resources: Without quality control, companies may misuse resources, resulting in higher costs and lower profits.
- Legal non-compliance: Lack of control can lead to breaches of financial, tax, labor, and other regulations, resulting in fines and other penalties.
- Data loss risks: Absence of control standards can create information security vulnerabilities, increasing the risk of confidential data leaks.
- Low quality of products and services: Improper control could result in the reduced quality of produced goods and services, which may lead to reputational damage.
- Poor process management: The lack of control standards makes it difficult to manage business processes, which may cause chaos in the company’s internal operations.
Also, certain companies reduce control solely to penalizing employees rather than seeking problems as well as cause and effect relationships that produce certain consequences. This is a fundamentally wrong decision that will never increase productivity or motivation.
For instance, managers who fail to implement the lead generation plan could be punished by being deprived of bonuses, whereas taking efforts to find out why this is happening would be a more effective option. The problem is likely to be caused by an improperly configured CRM system, excessive planning or ineffective sales scripts, rather than by employees and their negligence.
Who should perform quality control in business processes?
Managers do not have to monitor the quality of business processes themselves, with the function often delegated to their assistants. The quality control service can be organized either within a large company or by hiring freelance experts. It is important to determine business processes that need to be controlled as well as their criteria and the outcome: reports should be clear and comprehensible for further analysis of the overall work quality.
Importantly, the assessment of the control results should be followed by making adequate decisions to be implemented, not postponed. For instance, external quality control experts can find sort of a bottleneck that the management ignores as they are afraid of bothering valuable employees or lack a strong-willed decision, claiming there has always been drawdown in this sector and there is nothing to worry about.
However, you cannot do that because the thread breaks where it is weakest, as the saying goes. Detected problems must be eliminated; this is the sole way of making the company’s work more efficient.
In this regard, verification criteria should be dynamic rather than static in order to reflect changes in external conditions, market competition, consumer preferences, and technology innovations.
How quality control helps streamline business process
Quality control allows companies to identify problems, errors and improvements in the business process, with its results revealing areas that require changes, improvements, or optimization.
In one instance, a Russian company decided to check the work of fifty remote managers, in particular, as regards conducting Zoom meetings with clients, and found that certain employees failed to stick to the planned script, deviating from it and shortening the conversation time. One would think that they violated established rules and had to be penalized – but surprisingly, those who had chosen to make meetings shorter achieved the best results in sales. As a result, the executives saw that more lengthy meetings with abundance of information did not necessarily lead to the desired conversions, and chose to reorganize the process by changing the script. This ultimately led not only to lesser time for communicating with clients but also to improved sales. Such examples are plentiful.
Summing it up
Russian businesses’ experience has shown that the most successful companies have their managers delegating control over the implementation of business processes to their assistants or third-party experts while paying greater attention to global tasks.
Yet, managers should follow advice and conclusions provided by the quality control service which helps analyze the company’s business processes and make changes, ultimately contributing to greater efficiency, better product quality and competitiveness in the market.
By Alexander Stepin, Owner and CEO, ABC Consulting