Article contributed by Mike Berman, COO, Day & Nite/All Service, with Tia Tassava
We are all familiar with Winston Churchill’s “Perfection is the enemy of progress,” but actually putting this time-tested phrase into practice is an entirely different matter. While there are several recurring reasons for impeded necessary progress, we find one unifying connective theme: momentum, where it is present, sidetracked, or absent.
True in any environment, waging a determined fight to build positive momentum in your business in an era marred by uncertainty—or the far worse negative momentum building around us—is arguably executive management’s most important priority as we look ahead to 2021. With Covid-19 cases now skyrocketing past 100,000 per day, with local and state governments either reissuing stay at home orders or contemplating rollbacks/shutdowns, failure to gain as much control for building positive momentum in your business will likely have the most devastating consequences. Building positive momentum is a most active pursuit, requiring full alignment internal and external to your organization, a commitment from all stakeholders to contribute.
Constant scenario planning is a cornerstone Day & Nite family of companies method for building universally positive business momentum. In late 2019 company management recognized the severe threat coronavirus could pose, particularly to the hospitality industry. This early planning directly led to the Company’s most ambitious investment, growth, and expansion in a concentrated period in its > 40-year history. At a time where the vast majority of businesses were just hanging on, struggling to survive, a small sampling of Day & Nite/All Service/Popular Plumbing initiatives include:
The Company launched Day & Nite Performance Solutions, a highly engineered technology/product/service offering created to comprehensively and cost-effectively provide superior indoor environmental quality, food safety solutions, and workplace and guest hygiene. With deep investment in proprietary technologies, ranging from DNAS Lite—a mobile app designed to help customers more efficiently manage all assets—to reducing several manual steps and improving certainty of execution throughout the supply chain. Rapid expansion through DNAS Global Facility Solutions to better serve the market, with particular emphasis on delivering streamlined, superior economies of scale, all designed to deliver accelerated value. Tight customer alignment further achieved and solidified by conducting thorough client review sessions late 3rd quarter through the end of this year.
Given the range of Day & Nite’s large, diverse customer base and the depth of these extensive client review discussions, here are some critical takeaways that can help you restore and build necessary positive momentum in your business, no matter how challenging events around us may be:
- Organize, Build, Manage to a Meaningful Process: of course, results matter, but an almost obsessive quest for getting to a goal, finding a total victory has compromised commitment to essential processes that always serve as vital underpinnings generating sustained, significant prosperity and profitability.
- End the Addiction to Reactive Management: whether it’s no longer chasing the shiny object or getting out of the trap of having incidents and accidents dictate a day, momentum is always lost when even business segments fall captive to reacting as a routine.
- Establish Smart Not Moveable Deadlines: when deadlines are meaningless, it leads to institutionalized procrastination, another surefire momentum killer. By definition, smart deadlines must be realistic, singular, and unambiguous. Accountability to deadlines propels momentum.
- Constant Inspection and Introspection: Inspection is supervisory, introspection is individual; in combination, these qualities embed a culture of continuous improvement, a momentum bedrock, and
- Never Let Your Guard Down!: Not to the point of always being on edge, but complacency is as much momentum’s enemy as the pursuit of perfection is.
