Improve My Business

What’s in a [brand] name?
Companies that are marketing their services may tell you that they live, and die, by their brand. But how important is a brand when you are working on continual improvement? Is it something you should be paying attention to?
Absolutely, the marketing gurus say. Brand is the way that folks will identify you; find you; and associate a set of feelings, memories, and emotions with you. So, if we take that to be true, should we be branding our improvement work?
If so, how? Post a comment and tell me how you envision branding your improvement ideas.

Technorati Tags: branding, improvement

Earlier this month we talked about “dividing and conquering” your to-do list. The very next week I received my Mind Tools newsletter, titled “Delegate and Thrive”. The newsletter article goes into detail on the what, why, how, and when to delegate. There’s also a free downloadable Delegation Worksheet and a quick “How Well do you Delegate” quiz.

I scored a 36, which indicates I’m making progress on my delegation skills. How about you? What challenges do you face with delegation?

Technorati Tags: communication, delegation, leadership, newsletters, problem solving, Streamlining, teamwork, working smarter

Friday at last - and a long weekend too! Memorial Day is the unofficial kick-off for summer. More than that, it is a holiday that serves to remind us of all American soldiers who have lost their lives fighting for our country. This is one of the few holidays that can be enjoyed without succumbing to the pressure to spend money on cards and gifts. It is a holiday that many families get together and celebrate with their own family traditions. Barbeques, picnics, a day at the lake, or a camping trip are all popular pastimes during this weekend.

The History Channel’s website provides some great information about the origin of Memorial Day, including a great 3.5 minute video that relays the history and meaning of the holiday that is sure to immerse you in the spirit of the holiday, and is perfect to share your kids.

Do you have a tradition in your family or workplace to celebrate Memorial Day? If not, it’s never too late to start one! Please share some of your traditions and the history behind them with us.

Technorati Tags: Family, History, Holiday, Memorial Day, Tradition

When you find an error in your process or system, you should do an analysis of the reason you made that error.  Many times, you may find out that the reason that an error was made is that you don’t have a process - or that the process wasn’t followed (but that’ll be another post…)

So, if you don’t have a process - design one!

HOW do you design a process?  Easy peasy - map the process out.  How do you map a process?  Write down the steps that need to be done in order, try following those steps, then refine it until you’ve got it where  you want it.

Here’s an example:  we rent our Texas beach house out on VRBO and HomeAway. During this time of year, we get a LOT of requests for summer rentals.  The big risk is to rent the place twice for the same night(s) - double booking, so we want to make sure that we have a process in place.  Sure enough, we didn’t have our process in place, and ended up with a double booking this year; luckily, we caught it within an hour of accepting the second booking, so only had to apologize profusely and refund the deposit.  [It would've been MUCH worse if both families had shown up at the beach place expecting to stay for a week!]

So the problem remained - we had double booked.  How to revise our current process?

1. we stopped letting all folks take and make reservations - I am now the linchpin for the reservation process, and although others can check the account and answer queries, I’m the only one who accepts a deposit.
2. We track every reservation and deposit on a spreadsheet - and the process has to be followed in order.  So, a reservation has to be logged in and the calendar dates have to be blocked out before we deposit the money, as an example - to ensure that money isn’t accepted prior to verifying that the calendar is available.  The spreadsheet is sorted by date, so this should ensure that we don’t double-book.
3. Our double check for this is to make a copy of the check or credit card deposit, and to file those by dates  in a paper backup file.  [That's how we found out that we had double booked - the calendar hadn't been updated, but we had a deposit for that week already.]
4. Then, and only then, do we let our guests know that they have secured the reservation and continue the process.

We are hopeful that these tweaks will work for us, but are vigilant to identify possible ‘loopholes’ in the process, and plug them up. This is the essence of effective corrective action - monitoring to ensure that the process design is robust enough to prevent recurrence of the problem.

Have you had a problem, or made an error, and put a process in place to ‘fix’ it?  Post it here or contact me at marymcd@mcdcg.com - I’d love to hear about it!

Technorati Tags: beach home, process design, process improvement, process map

So, you’re using Twitter, but you wish you were getting more out of it?

Well, there’s no reason you shouldn’t be able to improve the way you use Twitter.

This site lists over 150 Twitter tools that can help you customize your twittering so that it works for you.

I’m using just 3 of these. (Guess I’m a bit behind) Let’s see how many I can utilize by the end of the week! How many Twitter Tools are you using? Do you have a favorite that’s not listed?

Technorati Tags: communication, improvement, twitter