jwanheah

Many have asked us what we did to turn a 25 year old organisation around. The Malaysia Book Of Records came under new ownership in 2015 and up till the new team came on board in 2019, the organisation faced difficulties in revenue and operations. A management decision to bring on 3 new hires with marketing, operations and advertising experience led to turnaround to profitability within 8-months and onwards to 164% growth.

Here are some of the things we did and what worked for us. I hope you find a diamond in here that will help you in your work or organisation

1. Organisational health check.
First is to run a health check to see how where we are with everything from operations to brand. You cant improve what you don’t know. One of the biggest downfalls i’ve witnessed is leaders passing comments and giving instructions without having any real insights or experience in the roles or work. You don’t need to be an expert at it, but i highly recommend you at least experience the work before making changes. So I personally did every role and task that was involved in the organisation to see how it’s done and analysed how it can be done better. From this health check, i discovered a plethora of operational issues that not only affected revenue but had a negative brand perception.

2. Put people in the right seats
Often times people are in roles that don’t suit their skills or are in roles because that was the only thing they were offered and management never took the time to understand what they are good at, what they want or what they like doing. So i spent a fair bit of time observing everyone in the organisation, identified their strengths, tried to understand their values, and moved them to roles that best suited them (where possible!).

3. Goals
Without something measurable and attainable to aim for, anywhere is the right direction, including not doing anything. There were no clear goals and direction and hence we had alot of people not knowing if what they were doing was productive and everyone operated at their own pace and standards. So I set goals and targets and aligned everyone through KPIs towards a common measurable goal.

4. Systems make sure you win all the time
Goals ensure you win, systems ensure you win consistently. We created tools, systems, processes and best practices to ensure everything moved as per plan and enabled us to make better data based decisions. When we hit record numbers in one year, those who did not understand systems thought we hit a bumper year. We went on to achieve even higher the following year, and are on track to maintain it. People run the business and systems run the people. This has allowed me to focus on longer term plans as i now only have to ensure the system is working and ensure people are following the system.

5. Service
Nothing works better than providing your customer exceptional service. Identifying team members with customer service skills and dedicating them & myself to providing greater service to our clients resulted in never seen before brand perception and revenue results.

I hope you find some value from this and wish you all the best in your endeavours.

Follow @jwanheah on various social platforms for nuggets of life lessons and inspiration
Follow @malaysiabookofrecords on social media for updates on national records.

PEACE!