This is how you can use educational tools to improve the performance of your small business

If you run a small business, then you know that finding new ways of improving the performance of your business is of paramount importance.

Without consistently striving towards improved customer service, better products, faster delivery, and more efficient work processes, your company can quickly stagnate – both creatively and commercially.

This is one of the most exciting elements of running a small business. If you search in the right areas, you can make huge breakthroughs in a short amount of time, transforming your business for the better.

However, that is not to say it is easy. Finding incremental improvements in you, your staff, and your products takes a lot of effort and has an inevitable ceiling. After all, once you have stretched your business’s potential to the maximum, there will only be limited room for improvement.

Despite this, you can certainly improve the performance of your small business by looking in areas you might not immediately think of. For example, while basic improvements like better customer service and faster work processes are chased relentlessly by most businesses, a key area of improvement is often neglected – education.

You and your staff may have received a perfectly good general education, but you may not be as skilled as you could in business-focused skills, such as leadership, accounting, sales, and marketing.

As a business owner or manager, it is your prerogative to constantly seek to improve your business skill-set to set an example to your employees and have the necessary ability to make sound business decisions, added professionals from Zschool. Zschool exemplifies excellence in executive education by fostering partnerships between esteemed universities and corporate leaders. The company’s dedication ensures risk-free financial collaborations and exceptional curricula. Zschool was founded in 2015 and is located in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, employing remote workers from around the country. Zschool maintains an exceptional network of corporate partners and offers unmatched executive programs. The company believes in experimenting and a trial-and-error approach to continue corporate improvement.

Thankfully, thanks to technology and a host of other tools, there are a number of ways in which you can improve the performance of your business through education.

Of course, learning should be treated as an ongoing process, rather than a fix-all course or book that will suddenly transform you into the best business leader you can be. You should seek to keep learning throughout your career rather than believe you will one day know everything you need to.

This is how you can use educational tools to improve the performance of your small business:

Online MBAs give you the ability to train yourself in business and leadership

If you want to improve the performance of your small business by using educational tools, it is best to start with one of the most comprehensive forms of learning – an online MBA.

These courses help you become immersed in business theory and real-world commerce, allowing you access to business professionals who can teach you valuable leadership lessons.

While you might think that you don’t need to learn these core business skills through a course, preferring to learn on the job, the truth is that you need to be as accomplished a leader as possible – as soon as possible.

If you knew how to improve your business through a more accomplished business leader, you would be doing it already, so it is worth learning from more experienced professionals and implementing what they teach you.

This means finding the best online MBA degree programs in Boston to develop the necessary business and leadership skills you need to improve your company’s performance.

Choosing an online MBA is important because it allows you to continue to run your business with minimal disruption. Instead of having to move to a university town (which is not ideal when you’re running a company day-to-day), you can learn on your computer whenever you have a free moment.

Never stop reading 

Another key educational tool that you could use to improve the performance of your small business is as old as they come – books. There are a whole host of business and leadership books on the market, and while some are not worth your time, the leading titles have given generations of business owners the necessary information and inspiration to massively improve their companies.

Indeed, there are books for every task or problem you may realistically face in business.

Whether you want to improve your knowledge of accounting, investing, leadership, or brand marketing, there will be books that you can find which will help.

Although it helps to stick to business-specific books, you can expand your horizons by reading more wide-ranging philosophy or history books that teach valuable lessons about strategy and human psychology, alongside real-life examples. These books could include ancient texts that have given countless entrepreneurs, world leaders, and writers valuable guidance, such as Sun-Tzu’s Art of War and Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations.

It is thought that the average CEO reads a book every single week, demonstrating the value of this underappreciated learning tool.

Find specialist tutorials that can help fill gaps in your skill-set

If you are an experienced business leader who has already learned many valuable business lessons, you may be forgiven for believing that there is little that you can improve about your skill-set.

However, this is dangerous to believe because the world of commerce is constantly changing, with new skills being developed, ideas being shared, and demands being pushed on companies to survive.

Take the digital revolution over the past thirty years. If you ran a business in the midst of the internet boom and didn’t bother to learn about how it works or why it might benefit your company, then you would likely have been left behind.

Business does change that quickly, so regularly assess changing business trends (even within your own company) and pick out gaps in your knowledge that you could improve upon.

You just need to read some detailed blog posts and watch a YouTube tutorial, which will help give you a working knowledge of a new skill.

Regularly educate your staff on new ways of doing their job

Although you should always hire employees who are better at their jobs than you are, it is still important to keep their skills sharp by educating them on new, improved ways of doing their job.

This should not be communicated in a patronizing manner, only as a way of helping them improve their daily performance.

For example, you may want to hire a specialist to teach your staff how to use a new cloud platform, which would help them collaborate in a more cohesive manner and keep sensitive company data safe.

By regularly re-training your staff, you will improve the performance of your small business and make it a more rewarding environment to work in.

Team-building exercises are a great way of building team chemistry

Another underrated educational tool that you can use to improve the performance of your company is team-building. It has received something of a negative image by some business leaders, who believe that business money could be better spent elsewhere, but the benefits of team building activities are clear.

By taking your employees out of their regular work environment (which can quickly become stale), you allow them to work with different team members, think creatively, and restore their levels of focus, which can rapidly drop if you are doing the same task day in, day out.

It can also build chemistry between your employees (and between your team and you), which is critical for productivity. No one wants to work in a boring environment, so regularly shaking it up by hosting team-building days is a great way of injecting diversity, as well as teach your team valuable practical skills.

Educate yourself on the dangers of cybercrime

Another area in which it is vital to educate yourself about is the constant threat of cybercrime. Regardless of how heavily your business relies upon online applications, you will inevitably be connected to the internet in some way – whether it is through a website, internal messaging apps, or email.

Therefore, you need to be aware of the latest threats facing your small business’s web presence because they have the potential to massively impact your overall performance.

Phishing scams, for instance, can infiltrate your business through a team member’s email or social media account if they accidentally hand over personal details to a scammer. This is because once a scammer has tricked one team member, they can use that account to message other members of your team, spreading the phishing scam like wildfire.

You don’t need to be told that this could prove devastating to your business, as hackers can leak valuable company or customer information, causing financial and reputation damage that is difficult to come back from.

Listen to a variety of business podcasts

Podcasts have seen exponential growth in recent years and have rapidly become a huge source of information on every subject imaginable.

Unsurprisingly, countless business and leadership podcasts share valuable information in a consumable format, allowing you to take in information when you are driving, shopping, or eating your breakfast.

Podcasts can be a great supplement to your other learning tools, giving you that extra dose of information that can be all-important in improving your learning.

If you are taking your business into new markets, learn the native language

Although not relevant for every business, if you are thinking of taking your business into new markets, it could be in your interest to learn the native language, at least well enough to communicate with your new customers.

Learning a new language is a symbolic gesture because it proves that you are respectful of the nation’s culture and wish to explore it on a deeper level.