When you are up against it, you can't spread yourself thin. You need to focus.
Once you have chosen an area and decided to focus, you need to keep your target in your sights.
About the author:
Giles Johnston is a Chartered Engineer who specialises in helping businesses to grow and improve through better business processes and embracing Kaizen.
Giles is also the author of Effective Root Cause Analysis and 'What Does Good Look Like?'.
This is especially important when you need a change to keep your business operations afloat.
So, if you can't do everything, what do you choose?
Some prompts
If you find yourself in this predicament, try these prompts to clarify your thinking:
- What flavour is the change you need to make? Is it production? Is it sales? Is it financial? What area is going to create the greatest relief if you tackle it?
- Where can you do less? What activities can you drop temporarily to free up resource?
- Who can you ask to join you? Who in your business has the skills and motivation to help you take action and get results fast?
- Where would some good old fashioned discipline and routine work well? What standards have you dropped that you need to put back in place?
Hit it until you hit it
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If you have managed to pull a team together, meet daily to discuss progress. If you use Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), bring them front and centre.
Don't shy away from the numbers. Take a dose of reality and then action your plan. Keep watching the KPIs, to make sure that your actions are taking effect.
And, if the results aren't progressing fast enough, consider paring back and pushing just one part of your improvement at a time, with the whole team behind it.
A formula
Hitting one business improvement at a time, as a team, is a good strategy to take for improving business results.
If you have found that your business improvement projects keep falling over, or stalling, then this approach might serve you well.
Giles
About the author:
Giles Johnston is a Chartered Engineer who specialises in helping businesses to grow and improve through better business processes and embracing Kaizen.
Giles is also the author of Effective Root Cause Analysis and 'What Does Good Look Like?'.