The Smartspeed Performance Improvement Blog

Just a simple question for you today: 'How much time does your business spend on CI each week?' OK, and another one: 'Does that amount of time reflect your business' aspirations?' If you want some strategies to change this around read this article . Giles Johnston Author of Business Process Re-Engineering Now available in PDF format

I had a great catch up with a colleague yesterday and we were reminiscing about past projects when we, as Engineers at the time, would struggle to get people to realise that designing a problem out of a process is usually better than just managing it. I spend most of my time nowadays with clients who want to improve their on time delivery performance . Guess what? When I first start working with them they are trying to manage their problems rather than design them out. In 2015, so far, one of the common problems that I been asked to help with is 're-scheduling'.

Some business processes can be rather detailed, can't they? They may be written, or flow charted, and extend for pages. The question I often ask myself, when working on my client's projects, is 'do people actually understand them?'

I was recalling a past conversation to one of my clients today; it was based on the idea that 'all decisions are financial'. The conversation that I was recalling was between me and a talented Engineer who was frustrated by his boss' lack of enthusiasm to an improvement he had identified.

You know how it goes... The 'team' get all fired up and create their improvement plan. Finally, you think, your business is going to move up a gear. And then it happens.

When I am working with clients I often hear them talking about potential improvement ideas. But, when I ask them where they keep their improvement ideas they can't show me!

I get it. No, I really do. People are busy. Are you busy? I certainly know the feeling. However, when someone tells me that progress is not being made on their improvement projects because they haven't got time it makes me question what they do have time for.