What’s Your #1 Problem You Must Solve This Year?

Mar 1

It’s that time of year when you must consider what to prioritize this year, and really first big step is determining the #1 problem you need to solve in the upcoming year. Whether you’re the CEO of a multinational enterprise company or a small business owner, you have to face the same challenge: how to stay ahead of the curve and make sure your business is successful.

It can be daunting to figure out what your #1 problem should be. You want to make sure you solve it quickly and efficiently so you can move on to other areas of your business. So, what should it be? That question is being asked excitedly at this very moment by business leaders all over.

While the details really depend on your business and the type of industry you’re in there are three general categories consistently that most businesses should consider.

One for sure: you need to focus on increasing productivity and efficiency. This may involve creating new processes and procedures, investing in better technology, or finding ways to motivate your team.

Second, you also need to make sure you’re staying on top of the latest trends in your industry. Staying ahead of the competition is key to staying successful. You may need to make changes in your marketing or sales strategies, or find ways to better target your customers.

Third, you need to ensure your team is happy and engaged. This means providing them with the right tools and resources to do their job, and making sure they have the training and support they need. You may also need to create a better work-life balance to keep your team motivated and productive.

Excited about change for the better yet? Here are some questions that may help identify the #1 problem you want to solve:

Of all the changes you want to make - What is the change that will make the biggest impact to the business?
What small changes support the big change you envision for this year?
What Process can be done faster?
What Process does not need to continue?
What processes need to reduce defects and failures?
What could be automated to accelerate your processes?
How do you automate those business processess?

Leveraging those questions as part of the discovery process helps stay focused on what you can control, and what will make the biggest positive impacts to your business. It’s exciting to think about how these small changes will improve life around the office too!

Figuring out where to start can be challenging. Start with determining what your process is and where you are in your process for delivering positive changes.

Where are you on that opportunity-discovery journey?
Is this new territory for you or are you enhancing already existing capabilities?
Are you focused on the identification of the issues?
Are you already seeking the solutions to get to the outcomes you want?
Are you doing this while also running your business effectively or struggling to do both?

If you are further along in this process you either already have or are considering different apps, software, hardware, and process changes. By now you have probably heard about “the cloud” as everyone is talking about it, and for good reason. Almost every business should consider looking at cloud applications as part of your discovery process. Cloud systems create massive upside and remove a lot of downside. Those that build their cloud application strategy now will make bigger impacts on their business over the next year with benefits reaching into the next decade to follow. Other experts agree as well.

“Organizations with a clear strategy are in a better position to achieve greater outcomes from cloud investments than those without one… they achieve more benefits and avoid more downsides.” - Gartner

There is a good reason why at least 96 of the fortune 100 companies, and 90% of the Fortune 500 companies rely on solid cloud applications to get to and maintain their lofty positions. And many of them started as small businesses.

Cloud application design, implementation and management seem complex? You are not alone in thinking that way. ZDnet states “Two-thirds of large organizations are not realizing the full benefits of cloud investments and cite operational change and complexity as a key root cause.” Most companies without a strong cloud app background find their adoption of cloud apps daunting and struggle with programs to get them off the ground internally.

Yet those that successfully adopt cloud apps are able to innovate faster and build stronger businesses. Those businesses have a better 360 degree view of their customer, the customer’s needs, and deliver solutions customers want faster than their competitors while making more money and cutting costs.