Warm Tip: Click the blue text above “FMCG Distributor Professional Consulting” to learn more about marketing and distributor internal management. Many small and medium-sized growing enterprises often experience a strange phenomenon: almost everyone in the company is busy, but overall efficiency is low! It's hard to find the cause and know how to improve. This article tells you where to start looking for the causes. 1. Imperfect Processes Processes are the foundation of daily operations. When a company's efficiency is low, first check: whether the processes are reasonable, simple, and efficient, whether there is room for improvement, and how likely improvement is. When checking processes, first examine the process system itself. The process system of a company is not a simple business chain, but a complex closed-loop system, like the human blood circulation system, including: the main system, branch systems, sub-branch systems, and peripheral systems. Therefore, first check whether the circulation system from start to end is smooth, closed, without breaks, blockages, or embolisms, whether there are redundancies or deficiencies, and whether new systems need to be added. Second, check whether processes are formatted and templated, whether flow rates are reasonable and stable, whether the designed flow on each pipeline is reasonable, and whether actual flow meets or exceeds standards. Process checks should also include what flows through the processes. In recent years, many companies have been optimizing and reengineering processes, so what exactly flows through them? There are four aspects: first, logistics; second, information flow; third, cash flow; fourth, cultural flow—what flows through the process is the company's personality and characteristics, i.e., corporate culture. The key reason a company can be recognized by customers in a competitive market is that the process carries the company's unique genes, its image ambassadors (i.e., employees' behavior), and its basic value orientation and philosophy. 2. Unsupported Systems If processes are not the issue, check whether management systems truly support the processes and their content, and whether they fully respect humanistic values: if too strict, people will find loopholes or even collectively resist; if too loose, enforcement is insufficient. If processes are water, then systems are the pipes. If pipes are not tight, diameters are mismatched, or pipes are not connected, it will directly affect the flow. Additionally, check whether the content flowing through the processes is correct and not chaotic. 3. Inadequate Supervision Even with good processes and systems, poor supervision, inadequate oversight, overstepping, outdated methods, low-quality supervisors, or overly complex organizational structures can greatly reduce operational efficiency. Processes and systems are fixed, but supervision is flexible and must follow principles. If supervisors are unfair, loyalty to processes and systems drops; if supervisors are incompetent, they don't know how to supervise, leading to ineffective oversight—not knowing what everyone is busy with, whether they are busy correctly, or even if they are truly busy; if supervision is too strict and rigid, without combining principles with flexibility, clinging to outdated systems, it will severely limit people's initiative and creativity, even pushing employees to be busy just to please supervisors; if those in high positions lack awareness of being supervised, or leaders themselves bypass processes and systems, supervision is greatly weakened. 4. Technology Mismatch Everyone is busy and tired, but overall efficiency is low. The fourth reason is management methods. Normally, outdated management methods severely limit efficiency, especially in manufacturing. The same computer, a 286 and a Pentium have vastly different speeds and quality; the same information transmission, broadband and dial-up have multiple times difference. More importantly, outdated equipment affects employee morale, and emotions are contagious, affecting work enthusiasm. However, if technology is too advanced, it can also limit internal efficiency. This is because the company environment doesn't support the equipment, affecting its normal performance. So advanced equipment may be unused or not perform efficiently, and it increases costs when interfacing with other process steps, naturally reducing efficiency. Moreover, management technology must not only fit the company's actual environment but also the external environment. If internal efficiency is high but external counterparts are slow, everyone is stuck in endless waiting, and efficiency drops. 5. Low Employee Quality Obviously, employees' professional quality greatly determines work efficiency. Professional quality is the overall professional character of employees. What is "character"? It refers to employees' social attributes related to work, mainly professional ethics related to the position. What is "quality"? It refers to natural attributes related to the position, including professional awareness, knowledge, skills, wisdom, and resources. Among these, professional awareness is crucial. What is professional awareness? It means that employees should know what to do and how to do it. Some companies have low efficiency because of employee quality, especially "quality." A high-quality employee may be two, three, or even ten times more efficient than an average one, and the work quality is different. Given the same task, a high-quality employee might finish in a day, while a low-quality one works hard but takes a week, and the quality is incomparable. Just in time, there's a 7-fold difference, not to mention quality. But under the influence of long-term egalitarianism, there can't be a 7-fold salary difference, so high-quality employees gradually leave, leaving average ones. The remaining employees have good ethics, work hard, and are busy, but overall efficiency is low. 6. Limited Supervisor Ability As the saying goes, "A soldier is only as good as his leader." Although everyone is busy, if senior managers lack ability, don't have strategic vision, can't coordinate tactically, can't identify and use talent well, can't effectively utilize limited resources, and can't know themselves and the enemy, they will fight the wrong battle at the wrong time and place with excellent soldiers, and failure is inevitable. As supervisors, especially senior ones, never let employees work in vain. Know that your command will be transmitted to the grassroots, and employees at all levels will be busy because of your command. If they are busy without results, it's futile or even negative work. If leaders don't dare to take responsibility, what do you think the outcome will be? If this happens often, employees become tired. But they can't disobey orders, so what do they do? They'll just do the minimum, each minding their own business. So everyone is busy, but actually busy with their own things, pretending to be busy for the supervisor, deceiving level by level. Another situation is changing orders frequently. If supervisors don't make decisions carefully, lack decisiveness, or are easily swayed, they may issue orders and then feel the decision was bad and want to change it, leading to random modifications during implementation, fostering a culture of arbitrariness. Initially, subordinates are uncomfortable, but over time they learn the boss's temperament and style, so even when orders are given, they anticipate changes and just pretend to act. The boss sees them moving and is satisfied, but results are slow in coming—no efficiency. 7. Misguided Culture Corporate culture also affects overall efficiency. If a company encourages individual heroism and doesn't cultivate teamwork and collaboration, then even if everyone wants to be a hero and is busy, they haven't developed the awareness and habits of collaboration. There are high walls between individuals and departments, so efficiency can't be high. Worse, some may fear others becoming heroes and affecting themselves, so they obstruct or even trip others up. If a company advocates a "busy" culture, employees will be busy for the sake of being busy, which is especially obvious in growing companies. The boss can't stand seeing people idle; when employees are idle, the boss feels uneasy. So they don't ask if tasks are completed, but only if people are busy. Some bosses don't directly criticize idle employees but indirectly praise busy ones, especially those working overtime. Little do they know that employees work overtime mostly because they lack ability, can't get to the point during work hours, and are busy with nothing; some like to work after hours; and worse, some have character issues and deliberately work overtime to show the boss. As a result, the boss praises overtime workers, and then everyone will be busy for the sake of being busy. The more busy, the more praise; the more praise, the busier—busy but ineffective. 8. Strategic Problems Another reason everyone is busy but overall efficiency is low is that the company's strategic positioning and direction are problematic. As the saying goes, "Men fear entering the wrong industry, women fear marrying the wrong man." A company also fears entering the wrong industry. If existing resources don't support entering a certain field, but strategists think they can, they may mistakenly enter an industry. Then no matter how busy employees are, they can't produce objective benefits; they'll exhaust themselves and still fall short. Strategic positioning errors include industry misalignment, target customer mispositioning, business domain mispositioning, and business model mispositioning. Any of these will affect overall efficiency and effectiveness. Everyone is busy but can't see results, so efficiency is out of the question. Strategic direction errors include wrong direction and unstable direction. If the direction is wrong, it's like going south while the destination is north; no matter how busy, it's negative or zero benefit. If the direction is unstable, swinging left and right, employees are busy but with repetitive and futile work—how can there be efficiency and benefit? A company's strategy determines whether what it does is valuable. The life cycle of a company requires continuous strategic positioning and adjustment. Every bottleneck requires strategic breakthroughs, and industry competition requires timely strategic transformation. If positioning is inaccurate, or breakthroughs and transformations aren't done in time, the company will inevitably be busy but inefficient and ineffective. Especially when an industry matures and starts declining, no matter how busy employees are, efficiency will be low. Even if the industry is growing, if the company itself is in decline, it will face the same. If the company is in the process of strategic transformation but hasn't truly transformed, it will also see busy but ineffective employees. In the early stages, if strategic positioning is unclear and swings, employees are busy but with no results. In summary, strategic problems lead to everyone being busy but inefficient and ineffective. Therefore, companies should change the "busy" culture, refine each person's work schedule, require tasks to be completed within specified times, and shift from focusing on form to combining results and process. But don't go to the other extreme—focusing only on results, leading to results for the sake of results, which would create an even worse corporate culture. -------------------------------------- Like this article? Feel free to click the top right corner to share to your circle of friends;**** About us: WeChat Name: FMCG Distributor Professional Consulting Management Account Introduction: 20 years of FMCG distributor operation and management experience, professionally targeting distributor internal management: We understand distributors better than manufacturers, and we understand internal management better than distributors. Senior marketing experts help your business grow. Click the "Read Original" below to enter our micro-community for interactive communication and questions. 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