When you have standard (routine) meetings you need to be prepared. Your team need to be prepared too. I see many of these meetings go through the motions and not really add any value to the day. How are yours? Here are some quick tips to reinvigorate your meetings if you aren't getting the results you want.

Continuous improvement needs time. Isn't that a revelation? It is a challenge for many of us to work out how to juggle our day to day obligations with our desire to improve how our business performs. For many of us our expectations of how fast we can progress is unrealistic and this can lead to frustration and eventually the stalling of our improvement projects.

That's a great question isn't it? Many times we get ourselves into conversations where we almost get convinced that there is no issue to resolve, no problem that needs fixing. But, we have to remember why we started the conversation in the first place.

I see many business improvement plans on my journeys. Many of them have a high level feel to them, general statements of intent rather than action plans. Are yours like this? If the answer is yes, then perhaps it is time to 'explode the details'!

Get my On Time Delivery Kit  for only $17 (USD) if you use the code OTIF  at the checkout before 6pm (BST) on the 3rd of June 2016. To learn more about the kit please visit:  https://smartspeed.dpdcart.com/product/106693 If you have any questions - drop me a line: gilesjohnston@smartspeed.co.uk Giles Johnston Author of Business Process Re-Engineering and creator of the ' Making It Happen ' online course for improving continuous improvement skills.

Thanks for all the feedback and questions about the Making It Happen course. I have now added a one off payment option for the course, so instead of monthly payments you can now make a one off payment at the end of the free trial period. This option works out cheaper than the monthly subscription price, but limits access to the lessons to 12 months. For more information please visit the Making It Happen  page -  http://goo.gl/GNZijy Giles Giles Johnston Author of Business Process Re-Engineering and creator of the ' Making It Happen ' online course for improving continuous improvement skills.

A number of years ago I used to have a voluntary role with my local Youth Offending Team. It was a very rewarding use of my time as I got to see young people make constructive changes in their lives. There was an interesting phrase that I picked up during my time there, 'minimisation'. Its effect is prevalent in businesses that aren't getting ahead with their improvement goals too.

Where does your business data flow to? Does it get shared, linked and used around your business? Or, does it get produced and nothing happens to it?

Have you ever played the yellow car game*? If you haven't, you might be wondering how many yellow cars there are on the roads. But, if you have you might be like me, staggered at how many yellow cars there are! Process improvement is similar.

When you implement (or update) a new business process it is vital that you understand how to manage it. It is one thing to use the metrics in your business to keep an eye on it, but sometimes you need to ask questions to make sure it is working the way that you want it to.

A strategy that many people use, when trying to develop ideas to improve their business, is using building blocks. By this I mean that they break down how their business works into smaller, easy to understand, chunks. Let me give you an example:

Many businesses measure their on time delivery performance by counting how many orders leave their business on the same date / time as agreed with their customer. That makes sense, and is how most businesses do it, shown in the diagram below: There is another way, a way that can help you to pin point where and when things aren't working properly. By measuring the start of the process you increase the chance of the process delivering on time (as in, you rarely catch up when you start late!). It's a small change in perspective when it comes to measuring on time delivery, but it gives you a chance to correct things before it is too late. Of course you can still measure the output, but by placing your focus on the start of the process you not only increase your chances of delivering on time but start the conversation around what needs to happen in order to launch your processes properly. The final results won't turn up by magic, but they can appear with

A team member at one of my clients was quizzing me the other day, he was struggling to share his vision of an improvement with the rest of his team. He needed them to get onboard, so that they could help in any way they could, but was struggling with how to arrange his thoughts. I gave him the following structure, and I thought that I would share it with you too via this blog.