One of my clients said the other week 'it's just about creating some good habits, isn't it?' He was talking about the outcome of the work we were doing together and largely he is right. Businesses are driven by habits, or routines. The ability to spot them, develop them and then do them is critical for effective day to day management.
Whenever you are involved in a change project it is likely that you are creating or changing a process. If it doesn't exist the change project is often there to put it in place. If you do have the process already then the change project is there to modify it. The routine that comes out of the back of the project is often the trigger to make sure that the process works properly.
Some processes are only triggered when they are needed, others need to be triggered constantly to keep the information, or product, moving through the business. Sunrise meetings are a great example of this, daily meetings that make sure that all of the essential processes are being triggered / closed off so that the day can be managed properly.
Routines don't have to be rigid either. Most routines aren't detailed for every minute between the start and end of your working day. The kind of routines I am talking about are things like:
- Standard meetings and their times.
- What day specific reports need to be completed for.
- What week the MRP housekeeping activities will take place.
- When sales orders will be entered onto the system by.
So, could I set my watch by you (or your team)? Could I witness repeating activity taking place in your business because your have mapped it out and decided what is important and when it needs to happen? If the answer is 'no' then it might be time to take a time out from your day to day busyness and have a look.
Giles Johnston
...fixing MRP systems and re-engineering business processes
P.S. If you do need to take a look at your routines, then please check out my book 'Sunrise Meetings'. Click here.