It’s amazing how Labor Day feels a lot like the beginning of a brand new year. If you have children fall might bring a new milestone – first day of school for a youngster, first day of high school for a teen or the first day of university for a young adult. Perhaps your organization needs to go back to school this fall to learn and deploy new skills.

For many businesses, fall is the time to refocus. If your business year lines up with the calendar year you are left with 120 days to make adjustments in order to hit your numbers. It is also budget season when organizations craft their plans for 2009. So whether you need to make a short term impact or simply need to plan for improvements in 2009, here are five ideas.

1. Raise prices, improve margins – If your marketplace can accept it, a price increase can help offset rising input costs. The corresponding improvement in margin falls directly to the bottom line and even if volume suffers slightly, often the margin improvement covers the volume reduction, essentially making more with less.

2. Confront non-performers – September boasts the largest number of job changes, both voluntary and involuntary. One reason is that many organizations start to see how their numbers look and realize that there is still some time to make adjustments to impact the numbers. Many individuals look for other opportunities in fall after a summer of personal reflection.

3. Strengthen leadership – Are the right people in charge of the right areas? It could be time to shuffle responsibilities. Managers are accountable for the performance of their departments and divisions. If elements of the plan have not been effectively implemented, now may be the right time to make changes. If your leadership bench strength is weak, then now is the time to plan for training and development to make steady improvements.

4. Build capability – To ensure performance is where it should be, consider whether your team has the capability to get the job done. Which behaviors need to change in order to get the desired results? Build a training and development program that addresses the shortcomings.

5. Eliminate waste – With the intensive focus on being lean, there is still an extraordinary amount of waste in most organizations. The challenge is that most of the waste is invisible because employees, managers and executives are used to the status quo. The unnecessary activities, the duplication of effort, the skirted accountability and missed opportunities.

How can we help you build your bench strength this fall and into 2009? Give us a call at 1-866-700-9043 or email info@uniquedevelopment.com