Spring cleaning in the workplace is more than just getting rid of old files, so you can consolidate your space. It can also be an annual ritual for leaders and teams to renew their mindset and create smarter, more efficient ways to conduct business operations and satisfy their customers’ biggest pain points.
In the long term, decluttering your physical business space and readjusting old procedures and thinking patterns can free your time to focus on what matters most for your company to succeed. Eleven leading experts from Fast Company Executive Board share the same sentiment. Here, they discuss their plans for spring cleaning and what they hope to accomplish by doing so.
1. EVALUATE TECH STACK AND PROCESSES.
We evaluated our tech stack and processes. This process allowed us to refine best practices, eliminate tools that had become redundant, invest in new tools, and save money at the same time. Plus, we surveyed our team to understand their work environment preferences and this allowed us to add an app so the team can use the office space wiser for reserving spots for group or individual work. – Kathleen Lucente, Red Fan Communications
2. REEXAMINE THE COMPANY VISION, MISSION, AND STRATEGIC OBJECTIVES.
A reexamination of whether the previous vision, mission, and strategic objectives of the Company are in order. Customers, employees, suppliers, and others now have different values and ideas of what is important in their lives and what they need. Beef up what is needed and eliminate that which is not—even if it might be something you’ve been doing for decades. – Zain Jaffer, Zain Ventures
3. CONSIDER NEW POSSIBILITIES.
Spring cleaning is as much about decluttering and tossing things out as it is about a shift in how you operate moving forward. We need to ask ourselves and our teams, what is one thing we can do differently this year to drive forward? By doing this we hope to get away from the dead-end mindset of “This is how we do things,” and open up to new possibilities. – Maggie ONeill, Peppercomm
4. STREAMLINE PRODUCTS AND SERVICES.
We’re going to refocus on making our main thing the main thing and get rid of anything that we’re not incredible at marketing and delivering. As an optimistic, future-focused founder, I have a tendency to over-create which can result in overwhelming my team. We’ll meet, trim, and move forward! – Mike Koenigs, The Superpower Accelerator
5. FOCUS ON A FRANCHISE SUPPORT TEAM.
We just launched a new division of our company that exclusively focuses on our franchise family and its customers. This allows us to have a dedicated support team for our franchise brands and their owners to prioritize their success. – Ray Titus, United Franchise Group
6. ASSESS AND STRENGTHEN THE CORE BUSINESS.
Whether it’s sorting through paperwork, optimizing digital processes, or evaluating customer and client relationships, assessing what’s working in your company can open the door to lasting success. By spring cleaning this year, I hope to both increase efficiency and strengthen the core. Then I can focus more on the bigger picture and create an even stronger foundation that will last into the future. – Leigh Burgess, Bold Industries Group, Inc.
7. ARCHIVE OLD RECORDS TO CLEAR DIGITAL STORAGE SPACE.
My favorite spring cleaning activity at the office is archiving records. It’s astonishing how quickly versions proliferate and how fast the number of copies of the same document grows—even on my own computer! Once a document is finalized, all previous versions can usually be deleted, and effective information management can improve data security and speed retrieval. It’s liberating! – Christina Robbins, Digitech Systems
8. REDUCE MEETING TIME.
We have been working on de-cluttering processes, documents, and meetings. The pandemic set us all in a flow of meeting first, documenting things, and starting new processes. A result for teams, due to the new way of working. Now it is time to reduce meeting time, reduce process documents, and minimize drag on accomplishing tasks, projects, and goals—that means growing revenue. – Michael Cupps, ActiveOps
9. NURTURE CLIENT RELATIONSHIPS.
I plan to implement a strategy to emphasize the importance of each client I call a VIP. My plans include holding monthly meetings with my VIPs and taking a more personal approach to delivering their needs. I plan to implement this strategy by forming stronger relationships with my clients and promoting them as long as they continue to use my services. – Kristin Marquet, Marquet Media, LLC
10. DEDICATE RESOURCES TO THE COMPANY’S MAIN PRIORITIES.
We have committed to ensuring that our work in business operations ladders up to our three primary priorities on what matters most. We ask the question, “Does this activity, process, and work support what matters most?” In marketing, this is especially important to align our limited resources to priorities as well as ensure that our team is dedicating all mental energy towards these areas. – Jennifer Dixson Hoff, Colibri Group
11. DESIGN A SUSTAINABLE APPROACH TO UPLEVEL BUSINESS OPERATIONS.
Instead of “spring cleaning,” design an improvement step into your processes for a more timely and sustainable approach to uplevel your operations. Amazonians utilize mechanisms, a virtuous cycle that reinforces and improves itself as it operates. It’s a tool, process adoption, and inspection of its utility and iteration built right in. This provides a means and an expectation of always raising the bar. – Karen Starns, OJO Canada