Many companies expand by adding offices or stores in different cities. But geographic growth involves logistical complexity and management finesse. Here's how to do it right.
Thomas Friedman was onto something when he wrote his book, The World is Flat. Companies increasingly feel the need to expand their reach into new markets—both domestically and internationally—from a very early age.
One direct result of this expansion is that you may now be forced to manage multiple locations and oversee employees in distant offices—a fact that can cause quite a few challenges and headaches, says Eric Bloom, president of Manager Mechanics, a management-training firm based in Ashland, Massachusetts.
"No matter how widespread your organization becomes, you need to work hard to retain team cohesion and the philosophy that everyone is on the same team regardless of where they work," he says.
Dig Deeper: Why You Should Expand
Managing Multiple Locations: 6 Challenges
1. Out-of-site-out-of-mind syndrome. When things get busy at your primary location, it can be hard to give your employees based at other locations the time they deserve.
2. Loss of spontaneous communications. Because you do not see your employees in the hallway or at meetings, there is very little natural or unplanned communication.
3. Attenuated logistics. Anything that cannot be sent electronically, must be mailed, which causes time delays and increased effort.
4. Complicated work assignments. It is harder to perform certain types of jobs or collaborate on them when employees are based in remote locations
5. Lack of team cohesiveness. Your team members will not know each other as well. This can easily lead to an "us-versus-them" mentality.
6. Concerns over general supervision. If you have a remote office that clients visit, it's virtually impossible to see if your employees are arriving on time, working appropriate business hours or wearing proper business attire.
To tackle these and other challenges, then, organizational leaders need to focus on three key areas: systems, technology, and communication.
Managing Multiple Locations: Put Systems in Place
The old adage is that systems run businesses, and people run systems. "You must have systems in place to be able to standardize the quality of your communications, products and results," says Bert Martinez, founder of Bert Martinez Communications, a business training and communications company with multiple locations. "Systems will allow you to duplicate offices and grow faster with reduce training times and supervision."
The key is to establish clear responsibilities, boundaries, and authority, says Ann Latham, president of Uncommon Clarity, an organizational-behavior consulting firm in Easthampton, Massachusetts. "Vague responsibilities create the proverbial cracks into which everything drops," she says. Muddy boundaries create disasters ranging from personnel problems to legal ones while insufficient authority can become a source of delay and demotivation. "An employee with everything needed to exercise good judgment except either the authority or sense of responsibility to do so is worth little," says Lantham.
The point, then, is to make each employee's responsibilities clear through an organizational structure combined with a system that measures each and every employee, and holds everyone accountable for delivering on their work responsibilities regardless of where they are based.
Dig Deeper: Building Systems to Manage Your Business
Managing Multiple Locations: Adopt New Technology
With the advent of the Internet, and the prolific surge in the number of collaborative tools that have spawned from it, technology has become an integral part of the backbone for any far-flung organization, says Bloom, particularly because it can help your organization cut down on business travel expenses.
While many organizations rely on custom-built software platforms and intranets as collaborative platforms, some of the most commonly-used tools by small businesses in particular are also either free, cheap or available as a software-as-a-service, which means you can access these tools over the web for a monthly fee. Some of the best and cost-effective options include:
• Google Documents, Gmail and Calendar for internal training and communication.
• Basecamp: An popular project management tool.
• Facebook : The now ubiquitous social networking tool is just as useful for business as it is for personal applications.
• Skype: The surge in VOIP technology and software means that you can communicate with remote employees cheaply and effectively.
• Salesforce.com: One of the most popular tools around, Salesforce.com allows remote sales team to collaborate in real-time on maintaining your company's sales pipeline.
A new wrinkle in terms of technology is that many firms have begun to equip all of their employees with smart phones such as the iPhone as a way to enable them to access any web-based technology regardless of where they are, including many new applications.
Dig Deeper: The Latest Small Business Technology News
