Declutter your office, declutter your business

There are plenty of programs on TV about home improvement, and many involve attempting to declutter a really messy house – sometimes extreme hoarding situations. I thought of those shows when a recent article in Forbes noted that Jack Welch used to compare GE to a large old house with a bunch of junk in the attic, which needed to be cleaned out from time to time.

Your credit union might not need a literal cleaning out – although I’m sure we all have a few stacks of paper that we don’t really need anymore – but like Welch said, every organization needs some spring cleaning from time to time.

Forbes said you “have to identify where your business — or your unit, function, or team — needs to ‘move’ in order to be exceptionally successful. This will give you and your colleagues the motivation to get rid of the clutter that’s slowing you down. For example, the head of a financial services firm recently challenged his team to increase their face-time with customers by 10%. This ‘move’ forced them to examine what they should stop doing, how they could streamline work, how they could improve the collaboration between the customer-facing teams and the back office, and more.”