By Les Yoder, Account Executive
Getting complacent with who you work with and failing to innovate is easy to do. It’s also easy to quickly lose your competitive edge. We have seen too many people have an attitude of “if it’s not broke, don’t fix it” that gets them into trouble.
Potential risks
Your competition is innovating and changing to build their businesses and increase their market share. If you are getting too comfortable with the status quo, you risk falling behind, losing customers and revenue. Small issues you don’t want to deal with now don’t disappear. Instead, they grow and become bigger issues. Deal with them.
How to prevent this mistake
Take inventory of your equipment, vendors, employees — any part of your business that keeps it growing. Ask yourself: “Are parts failing on equipment that should be replaced instead of just patched?” “How can new technologies help me meet environmental regulations more efficiently?” “How can my coating provider help me decrease our energy consumption?” “How can my line’s quality control processes be improved?”
Having policies that guide behavior and processes can prevent complacency in the workplace. Create policies to guide you if a part fails or employees don’t come to work to perform their job on a time-sensitive project. If you have recurring quality control issues in which coating specs aren’t being met, do something about it. When you have guidelines on how to handle these issues, you and your staff won’t let them slide.
Even successful leaders can grow complacent about certain parts of their businesses. It’s usually not intentional. But when people don’t step back and start asking tough questions and dealing with the truth of the situation, potential problems can become detrimental challenges.
How Accessa partners
As part of our consulting role at Accessa, we are always researching and looking out for ways our customers can innovate and improve. Most recently, environmental concerns have been at the top of our customers’ lists. Restrictions and regulations related to VOC and HAP emissions, formaldehyde and other concerns, are becoming more stringent. We help our customers stay compliant and innovative by recommending new equipment ideas or processes for how things might be done. Often this isn’t strictly a paint or finish issue, but our goal is to help customers grow stronger — not to just sell them paint.
Accessa partners with environmental and safety consultants to empower our clients to make more proactive decisions regarding potential opportunities to improve efficiency, reduce emissions, decrease financial liabilities/risks, ease permitting and more. These partnerships provide clients access to professionals in chemical management compliance and reporting, OSHA compliance and reporting, assessments and auditing, and strategies to become more environmentally responsible.
Consumers are driving the trend, with demands for environmentally friendly, sustainable products. Accessa does the trend-forecasting legwork to keep customers current. For example, water-based paints now have unprecedented durability, making them a great option to consider for a range of applications. We are out there talking to vendors and manufacturers every day, so keeping complacency away is par for the course.
Contact me at 317-879-2055 if you need recommendations for improving efficiency or staying compliant.