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As some have asked me to dive a little deeper into the processes & people aspect of what we did to create 300% growth, i decided to pen it down here.

i’ve mentioned that there are really only two things you need to continuously look at in an organisation, People & Process. If you think about it, every improvement you need and every issue you face in an organisation, comes down to only these two things; People & Process. And it is the role of management to continuously learn not only about new ways of doing things, new ways of managing people, but to also continuously learn about the business’s own processes and people. Both require constant evolving to keep up with our fast paced world. The world moves at a ridiculously fast pace, your business and more importantly your thinking has to move faster or you become irrelevant.

PEOPLE

They say people are the backbone of every organisation. People are everything. With globalisation and ease of accessibility to everything today, the only differentiating factor for any organisation is it’s people. There’s always a person behind everything in an organisation, and lets not forget that your customer is a person too. As Simon Sinek once said, “if you don’t understand people, you don’t understand business” .

if you don’t understand people, you don’t understand business

In many organisation’s, especially SMEs alot of management roles are helmed by people with little to no experience and knowledge in management (often lacking knowledge of the business!). And as in many cases, these managers receiving the ego boost of a promotion hinders them from admitting their shortcomings and seeking help or guidance. Many managers have been promoted to their ranks either because of their years of service or for other achievements they may have had that are not related to strategy or management. The result is either a high turnover where we usually see only the capable employees leaving and/or lacklustre results.

To be in a position of leadership is not to be in charge, is to take care of those in your charge. When it comes to people, bad leaders usually display these few traits: 1. they rely on and use their title often, 2. they want to appear important by calling meaningless meetings that are not designed to make things better nor have any real outcome, 3. they pass opinions on everyone’s work to show authority, 4. they are biased to their own needs, they’re usually late for meetings (because they feel their time is more valuable than yours), and 5. they display preferences usually towards toxic/non-performing employees that are sycophantic. To get the best out of your people, take conscious effort and self audit to ensure you’re not displaying any of the above. Inspire & lead your people instead by 1. Letting your work shine not your title, show them what you can deliver. 2. Don’t call a meeting unless absolutely necessary to get an outcome, gives the team autonomy, shows you don’t waste their time, and gains you respect. 3. Hold the tongue. The boss doesn’t need to comment on everything to be the boss, the more baseless opinions you pass, the less the team respects you and the less they will self initiate in future. 4. Always be on-time, this needs no explanation. 5. Decisions must be for the benefit of the organisation, not yours. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. Remember favouritism breeds resentment.

favouritism breeds resentment

People like all things in the world are constantly evolving, and today with the ease of access to information and knowledge, they evolve at rapid speed. To lead in today’s world, is to continuously learn, and learn at an equally rapid pace. New ideas, new ways of working, new data, new strategies are all necessary for a good manager today. Not only do we need to continuously keep pace with the ever changing way of working, we have to continuously take the effort to learn about our team members evolvement. As they progress in life so does their needs, wants & capabilities. It is the responsibility of good managers to constantly learn these changes in their people and move them to roles & responsibilities that best suit their evolution. One of changes i did that yielded our phenomenal growth in Malaysia Book Of Records was taking the time to learn each individual’s character and capabilities and move them to roles that better suited them. Before this, like some organisations it was managed in a ‘plug who is available anywhere’ method.

Zig Ziglar (the god father of management) once said that employees have 3 primal needs, interesting work, being let in on things that are going on in the organisation, and recognition for their work. So along with 2 new key management staff, i set out to work on these 3 points. I believe we have to get better internally before we can serve externally, and we worked on internal communication and recognition first. Some of the things we did: 1. We changed the titles of the team to better reflect the work they were doing which was in fact very interesting, but archaic and bland titles along with the way they were managed made the work mundane. 2. We created a centralised dashboard to track workflow and centralise necessary data, which keeps every team member aware of work progress. 3. I made the organisation more transparent by requesting access to our monthly P&L to share the numbers with the team to let the team in on where we are at and for everyone to see how what i’ve asked them to do is contributing the organisation’s growth. It is the compass to our north star. You don’t hit a goal you don’t set, and everything needs to be measurable to be able to be improved upon. 4. We did away with time consuming physical meetings that yield no outcome, i make it a point to call a meeting only when a collective decision needs to be made or an issue needs to be discussed. Everything else, there are modern digital tools that make things more efficient. That is what meetings should only be used for, to have an outcome or a decision at the end, and only relevant people should be in the meeting. time is the most valuable asset, and wasting people’s time is disrespectful. 5. The new managers and i made it a conscious effort to increase public recognition, with constant public praises of any wins no matter how tiny and for any extra effort displayed by the team. Often times, we served as the invisible hand and giving the credit to the team members. Till today some managers still think the work was done entirely by the individuals in the team, which only means we did a good job. I also spoke to the owners for an unprecedented bonus for the team when we hit the goals i set (and remind them annually!), something those who worked here years before i joined never enjoyed. And i keep the owners updated on achievements to ensure they are aware of the team’s performance. Always fight for your performing people.

wasting people’s time is disrespectful

PROCESS

Goals ensure you win, systems & processes ensure you win consistently.
Everything in an organisation is a process. Even if its a people issue, its likely process issue related. Flaws in the hiring process or improvements are needed in the on-boarding or training processes. One of the first things i did when i joined the Malaysia Book Of Records (and you should always do when you join an organisation!) was to understand the processes in the organisation. Once you understand the processes and start doing the work, you may find a huge discord. As an employee, you’re brought on board to ease the burden of your boss and solve problems. Many a time, achieving the above requires process changes. Fixing the huge gap between processes and reality is a mammoth task riddled with hurdles/resistance created by dinosaur managers and the non-performers who are resistant to change. Only non-performers resist change because it disrupts their comfort zone and brings their negative traits and lacklustre performance to the surface. Overcome these with the results and you’ll have a badge of honour on your resume.

Goals ensure you win, systems & processes ensure you win consistently

When it comes to process improvement, we constantly asked ourselves ‘what can i remove to make things faster and better?’. The irrelevant manager addresses an issue or reacts to something by adding a process or policy. This is because the said manager has never done the work nor put any effort to understand the work flow of the organisation, and the only thing they can think of is to create more unnecessary work for the team and slow down the work. If you understand the business and experienced the workflow, you’ll realise adding a process or policy doesn’t improve anything and give the team more work. Taking resources away from them doing the actual work that delivers the results. Focus on the results, processes and policies must be designed to support the end result not address everything that comes to attention. For us, we removed an abundant of archaic process steps and changed policies to support 3 key objectives only, speed, accuracy & revenue. By taking away unnecessary steps, the team was able to move faster and the autonomy paired with the right KPIs ensured the person doing the work took responsibility for accuracy. Both of which led to increased revenue! And i believe that most problems in an organisation can be solved with revenue. And solve we did!

As i mentioned earlier on how it can be very challenging to change processes and policies, what we did to overcome some of the challenges was to have a separate organisational workflow process including a different working organisational chart. These were designed to reflect the actual workflow, give autonomy to the team, minimise interference, and most importantly increase speed. A task that required planning and convincing the team that this is what is needed, and when we achieve a landmark milestone i’ll ensure they get rewarded. Always keep the naysayers, road blockers, non-performers and those resistant to change on a ‘what they think they need to know’ basis only to minimise interference. As there will always be people who don’t want to follow the workflow and are unable to adapt to change, we worked to keep them at an arm’s length to ensure our work moves along smoothly. Our growth hasn’t been as fast as i’d like it to be due to a small number of resistance (which is normal), but nonetheless we grew and i’m proud of the team for working with me on this. Follow this tip, everything we do and every decision we make is of genuine intent for the betterment of the organisation not us individually, and the results will show it. Follow this practice and eventually you will be recognised and rewarded. Do what is right for the brand, not what is right for you.

Processes & systems are designed to support goals and kept in check through KPIs and targets. Start with the end in mind, the goal. Then build systems to get the team to the goal, and have measurable KPIs and targets to keep the system moving fluidly. And with everything in an organisation, practise the KISS model of keeping things simple so everyone can understand and follow. Everybody loves autonomy, and autonomy allows individuals to shine. Measure the end results and resist the urge ‘to know’ and interfere with their work. For every question you ask and every comment you pass puts a person one step back into thinking i’ll wait for bosses instruction’ and you have an organisation that has no innovation and slow response where nobody wants to make decisions. Set the right goals, respect the system and step away if you’re not contributing more than those actually doing the work.

In summary, take the time to understand PEOPLE and help them grow and/or achieve their goals. The only constant is change, business changes, people change, and you must change. If you are in a position of leadership, don’t take credit away from those who do the work, give credit generously. Set goals, you can’t score a goal if you don’t know where your goal post is. Study your processes, always be asking what and who can you remove to make things faster & better. Make things easier for the team so they can focus their strengths on doing the work. You can lead from anywhere, and leadership is not about the title, be the leader you wish you had. Wishing you all the best in your endeavours for 2025 & beyond!