Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from September, 2016

Can timing affect the usefulness of your daily meetings?

This is a question I often pose to my clients. Many businesses will organise their standardised daily meetings   around a slot in their diary that suits the people attending, but not necessarily the business.

Do you have multiple strategies to meet customer demand?

Do you find that the workloads in your business are becoming more volatile? Do you find that what your business was used to doing on a regular basis and what it does now aren't the same? Many businesses are finding themselves with a lot more variety on their order books, especially in terms of how quickly customers want / expect things and the mix of the orders. So, how can you handle this?

Are you a continuous improvement 'early riser'?

Do you find that your continuous improvement projects are progressing as quickly as you would hope? If you're not, it might be worth considering what time of day you undertake your improvement activity.

Do you document your business process changes?

We all know that if you change a business process you should change the procedures to match, don't we? When we are being formal about the change this is easy to do. When we are trying out new ideas this can lead to inconsistencies in how we update our formal procedures, unless we are prepared to handle this situation.

Are you putting off making the right improvement choice?

We're faced with choices every day, and many of those are related to the improvement of our how our business operates. With each choice we hopefully are able to choose from a range of options, not just the choice of do nothing versus one alternative, During the last week I have seen two different situations where the right choice was being avoided because it didn't seem to be viable at that point in time.

Improvement kits are now included in the Making It Happen toolkit

I have just added my various process improvement kits to the Making It Happen  toolkit as part of the normal membership package.

Purpose driven process design

When we re-design our processes it can be easy to get carried away. New ideas, new changes and new opportunities are all around. How do you keep your enthusiasm under control, just long enough, so that you end up with a really good new process design?

Do you get what you want from your improvement projects?

Many of us have to work with others when it comes to continuous improvements . We know what we want in our heads, but in many cases the results just don't match what we're thinking. Asking for what you want can feel like an art at times, but if you get it right it can really accelerate how much change you can make in a period of time.

Boost Productivity by Getting a Second Opinion

Our business processes often stay the same, unchallenged if they are producing the results that they were designed for... but never reaching their full potential. So, what happens when you ask one of your colleagues what they think about your processes?

What's 'one better' than that?

Often we don't know exactly how we are going to make an improvement happen . We know the principle that we are going to follow, and we understand the general improvement activities that we need to undertake, but after that we can get a bit lost. A lot of people get stuck at this point, and their projects stall. It doesn't have to be like this.

Get $20 off the On Time Delivery Kit

Do you want to save $20 off the price of my On Time Delivery Kit ?

Do you have a human continuous improvement barometer?

When you are making changes in your business you will often have some hard metrics that you will monitor , to see if the changes are working out the way that you want them to. This approach, which is sound, can be complemented by the use of a human barometer.... What is a human barometer?

The Year of Continuous Improvement

I have just uploaded a schedule for the Making It Happen  toolkit. This schedule will allow you, or your business, to sequence the tools to create a structured year of continuous improvement training and implementation.

Making It Happen Toolkit module headings can now be viewed without a login

To help you understand more easily what modules are within the Making It Happen toolkit I have now changed the login process so that you can view all of the module headings before you join. Access the free improvement tools here

The Productivity Secret of a Daily Huddle

Yesterday I was talking to one of my clients about the value of holding a daily 'huddle'. By this I mean a very short, process driven, daily meeting. Do you do these in your business?

Do you over promise and under deliver?

The age old strategy of 'under promise and over deliver' is one that often goes wrong, doesn't it? Have you seen it go wrong in your business? For example - a customer is chasing you for an update on a late order and you give them your best delivery prediction.... only to watch it fall apart and witness your customer getting more and more irritated. Not only are they now angry at you / your business, you're now feeling less than brilliant. So how about these three pointers, should you find yourself in the same position?

Moving from an improvement idea to reality

One of my clients was struggling; their on time delivery performance was achieved through blood sweat and tears. They wanted their situation to be different . So, we looked at how they handled their orders and identified a simple change that was right in front of them.

'Right' versus 'results' - the ongoing continuous improvement struggle

We make things 'normal' don't we? The process that doesn't just quite work, the people who won't do what is asked of them, the tools that don't work... After a while we make them normal, We say to ourselves "that's the way it is..." and we put up with our current results!

Free Continuous Improvement Tools

To celebrate the launch of the Making It Happen  toolkit, please click here to access the free continuous improvement tools that are available on the website.