Every week you bring your managers together for a management or executive committee meeting. Are you getting all the benefit you would expect from a weekly meeting of the most competent people in your company?
The Management Committee is not an assembly of directors
A directors' meeting ... well ... it's a directors' meeting: each director is fighting for his or her position. But the opposite should be the case, the role of these meetings is to move the company forward. It is necessary for each participant to be able to see the big picture, to be comfortable with subjects such as logistics, research or finance.
Are the members who attend your meetings as comfortable with finance as you are? After all, they wouldn't think of driving a car without dashboards and indicators. Do they know what tools exist in the company?
Steering tools for the management committee
Each member of your management team can have at their disposal :
Dashboards
Forecasts and budgets
Cash flow monitoring
Cost accounting to track business or company departments
Analysis of needs and resources
These tools are issued by the finance department. This is not the only role that needs to concern the management: it also needs to ensure the financing of the machines you want to buy or the projects you want to implement. Therefore, it needs information, it needs to understand in detail how the business is running.
The finance department is a support department
Your CFO (Chief Financial Officer) or your CFO (Chief Administrative Officer) should see his or her department as a support department and not as an expert department, the only one capable of understanding finance. Of course, it is their job to ensure that the company complies with accounting and legal rules. But it must also share the possible implications of changes in legislation.
Above all, it is there to measure the company's progress, communicate and share its tools.
Two-way communication
Management tools will only be effective if they are implemented in a collaborative manner. What are the company's objectives? Of a division? How will you know if you are achieving these objectives? How quickly and how often do you need this information?
Open up the management committee to steering tools
You will increase your efficiency, measure the progress of your projects and be able to take corrective actions. Give it a try, if you wish, we can provide you with our skills and experience.
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