Skip to main content

Is Your Business Boring?

There is a phrase (I’m not sure how common) about good businesses being boring businesses. I don’t know how you feel about this, but I want to work in an interesting business.

But here’s the thing. If your business is out of control then you need to define what interesting means to you. If it means that chasing your tail and always being under severe pressure from customers then I could understand you not wanting a boring business.


On the other hand, if a controlled and methodical way of working that generates results does it for you then a ‘boring’ business makes sense. Routine, orderly and disciplined ways of working are usually far more productive than continuous fire fighting.

So, what about this? Let’s say that you move from a state of chaos to an orderly way of working. Arguably the business is now boring. But, and this is the point of this short article, the time you no longer spend on fire fighting can now be invested in doing interesting things.

  • You can work on the process improvement projects that you haven’t had time to do.
  • You can mentor and develop your up and coming talent, in the way that hadn't been able to do before.
  • You can partner with your best customers to increase your ‘share of wallet’ by offering new and innovative ways of delivering your products / services.

A good business may be boring, but only from the perspective of fire fighting. A boring business lets you work on the really interesting stuff, the projects that get you fired up and make the business a whole load of extra profit.

Do you want to be boring?


Giles Johnston
Author of 'Business Process Re-Engineering', a practical plan to improve business performance.

Popular posts from this blog

Take the pressure off! Using the Y-curve with your Kaizen improvements

Do you feel under pressure when you have to make changes happen in your business? It can be scary when we try something that we have never done before. I remember thinking to myself 'how on Earth am I going to figure this out?' on many occasions. I think the last time was a few weeks ago! Years on from becoming reasonable at the art of change I am still faced with the same dilemma. It is scary and it is clear to me why so many people shy away from making change happen. It is natural to get stuck in this oscillation. On one hand you need to make change happen; the business needs the improvement benefits. On the other hand you don't want to screw up... Last week I was talking to a young engineer that I am mentoring. He was paralysed. Changes were not happening at all. There was always some early promise with his projects and then, as completion (and judgement day) loomed, progress would evaporate. The engineer asked me for my views on this  during a recent conversati

The Kaizen Checklist is here!

Do you want to get better results from your Kaizen programme? Improve your business results quickly with my downloadable kit (including guidebook, workbook and templates) for only $39. Are you looking for a sustainable way to identify and implement improvements across your business? Practical improvement strategies The Kaizen Checklist is a downloadable kit that you can use with your management team to develop a system that suits your business and allow you to quickly implement Kaizen effectively at your place of work. This works great if you use it as the centre piece of your own internal workshop. The kit includes a 40 page guidebook, a workbook, four appendices and three templates. All parts of this kit are designed to get you up and running as fast as possible. If you are unfamiliar with Kaizen, let me stress that this is a simple improvement philosophy that is so much more than just  ‘a Japanese word for continuous improvement’. I’ll cover what it rea

Do you need a burst of improvement ideas for your business?

If you haven’t created your improvement action plan for 2020 yet then I have something for you. I have just completed my latest project – The CI Focus Tool . This Android App is now available on Google Play and provides a simple method for generating as many effective improvement ideas as you need. This is the same basic method that I describe in my book Effective Continuous Improvement  and is now available as a simple to use app. In essence it is a brainstorming focus tool. Press the focus button and you will be presented with a random continuous improvement focus. Brainstorm ideas around this focus with your team (whilst the timer is running) and there you go – a number of great ideas for you to prioritise and implement. The reason that this works so well is because of the focus. When your business runs out of its immediate problems to fix you need a different strategy. Very focused brainstorming helps you break past this problem and configuring the app to meet t