If you’ve ever watched football players getting ready for a play, you’ve seen them break the huddle, run to the line, get into positions, and start the play. This process works efficiently because they have trained for their jobs, knows their positions, and have practiced. If the coaches choose the right play with the right people at the right time, they will be successful.

The goal of infrastructure optimization is a lot like having your company begin every day like a sports team getting in position to make a play. You want every member of your team to know their role and be in the right place in order to do their job effectively and efficiently. As the coach and owner you have to constantly assess if you choose the right people and placed them in the most optimal position in the company.

So, how do you build that team? How do you get them in the right place with the proper training? It begins with hiring the right people and trusting them.

Infrastructure Optimization May Require Hiring The Right People, But Maybe Not At The Right Time

Let’s say you aren’t hiring anybody right now, but somebody is looking for a job, comes to your office, drops off a resume, and you decide to speak with them. Now, let’s say after 15 minutes of talking you realize they would be the perfect addition to your team. However, you’re not hiring.

There is no budget or even a desk for them to fill. So, do you let them walk away? This seemingly perfect candidate?

There isn’t a right or wrong answer, but you have to ask yourself if you would be willing to challenge your budget to hire the right player. Good employees aren’t always readily available when you are hiring. Often time when you are hiring it’s hard to find qualified people.

However, if you want the right people you need to be willing to hire them at the wrong time because they may be long gone by the time you have a need to fill.

Not Everybody Needs The Same Rules

Infrastructure optimization isn’t only about employees, logistics, and processes. Your company may have a wide variety of jobs with different requirements. Of course they are staffed by people of varying experience. Do the rules you have in place accommodate for their differences?

For example, a paper published by Shippensburg University revealed that as companies grew larger and added management, they placed more rules on their sales staff. Experienced salespeople regarded these rules as stifling and barriers to their creativity. However, inexperienced salespeople didn’t feel the same way.

The researchers suggested that the rules may need to be altered for people who are at different points in their career.

After all, does it make sense to constrain your proven producers with rules designed for people with less experience?

Set Goals For The Changes You Make And Measure Them With Hard Data

Infrastructure optimization works best when there are clear goals with clear KPIs to measure the effectiveness of the strategy. KPIs are crucial to the process.

As you make adjustments to the internal structure of your company changes will occur, KPIs will tell you how much of a difference was made and in what direction it took your company. You need to put as much effort into defining KPIs as you do to implementing any changes.
Infrastructure optimization is one of the core processes Equal Parts Consulting uses to help companies reach top efficiency. If you would like to take your company to the next level of effectiveness, we invite you to contact us for a private and comprehensive consultation.