Efficiency - it's not a selling point for the public sector, but all organizations stand to benefit from a stronger focus on efficient practice. It may be something as simple as saving on your next energy bill, or it may be a full-scale upending of a key business process. Whatever it is, it takes initiative and diligence to streamline your operations.

As a manager, you're in charge of recognizing inefficiency and developing an alternative approach. However, you can only wear so many hats. You need to promote a culture of efficiency. Incite your workers to recognize repetitive or costly practices and put forth their own ways of improving upon them. Acknowledgment or even some sort of bonus may be in line.

But how do you recognize inefficiency? It's not so easy when you have your own list of responsibilities and tasks to perform, and during busy times your mind can get so bogged down that you fail to notice the elephant in the room.

Every once in a while, you should ask yourself: Is what I'm doing especially repetitive? Is it taking an inordinate amount of time? Are too many people working on this? Does it seem expensive? If the answer is yes to a number of these questions, chances are your process is fairly inefficient and there's a better strategy out there.

Consulting services are one way to streamline a specific operation or department, such as accounting, payroll, customer service or IT. However, outsourcing and consulting fail to account for your overall corporate strategy.

"Every team of developers out there is going to provide the solution the way they know how," explains the blog Site Prebuilder. "They aren't experts in every different platform - only their own. It's up to you, the business, to research which solution is going to be the best, and then go in search of people to deliver it."

Marketing and advertising are critical - no matter the size of your business or scope of your industry. But, like anything else, there is such thing as a marketing budget that is way too big. There's also such thing as channeling your money toward archaic marketing channels. Today, the internet is the go-to resource for consumers - your promotional efforts should be equipped to meet content, social media and search engine demands.