Improve My Business

I recently gave a presentation at a well-known conference in my industry - something that I enjoy doing.  I get to share new ideas (or ideas combined in a different way), interact with folks, and get a conversation going.  Most gratifying to me was to hear a colleague whose opinion I admire and respect say, “Mary gave me such food for thought - I had never thought to combine these two techniques before, and she not only showed us how she did it, but gave us some ideas of how we can do it ‘back at the ranch’ “…

The presentation went well according to feedback (did it have anything to do with the fact that the presentation included lunch?), and I’ve been able to hear some interesting talks on diverse topics, as well as meet some great new business contacts.

What are YOU doing to improve your skills/business? Please comment on how you ensure that you’re staying on top of your particular market… is it

- reading trade journals?

- attending seminars? conferences?

- in-house training?

- online webinars? teleseminars?

- etc.

Do tell - I’d love to hear how you’re staying on top of your game!

And, if you’re not doing anything right now - take a minute to search online for some form of professional development; type some keywords into a search engine and read some relevant articles; find and bookmark / RSS some key websites or blogs and set aside 30 mins every week to read (may I suggest improveyourbusinessnow.com, blog.efficiencydr.com, or blog.sustainabilitydr.com ?)

Technorati Tags: Add new tag, Business, communication, mcdonald consulting group, preparation, training

Last night at dance class our instructor was talking about efficiency of movement and encouraging us to reduce the distance we move our center of gravity with each step. In general keeping steps smaller allows you to be quicker and is essential for dancing to faster tempo music. It got me thinking about efficiency in business expansions and wondering if similar principles apply.

To understand where I am coming from first think of your core business competencies as your business’ center of gravity. Now we can see that any expansion of our services or product offerings is a slight, or not so slight, shift of our center. Now similar to dance, the further away from our core competencies we get the more we are moving our center of gravity and the harder it is going to be to recover and change directions. In business this means that if we expand our offerings too far outside our core competencies it becomes increasingly harder to recover and we may wind up overextended. Sticking to expansions that are smaller steps away from our core competencies will allow for more speed and precision in our movements and also make it easier to recover should we decide that the expansion wasn’t a good idea.

With the pace of innovation and change we are seeing in the economy today it is becoming clear that going forward one of the key factors for business success is going to be agility. Those business that are able to most easily adapt to new changes in the marketplace are the ones that are going to survive. So think like a dancer when considering expansion and only move your core competencies as much as you have to. Don’t overdue it or you may get behind the beat and that’s never good in business or dancing.

Technorati Tags: Business, efficiency

We are all about trying to help you improve your business, whether that means improving your personal efficiency at work so you get more done, or helping you find ways to attract new customers. Today I want to talk about one of the easiest ways to improve your business, cost cutting. Cost cutting isn’t always easy, actually it is often very difficult to find areas to trim the budget because everything seems important. However, there are some often over looked steps we can take to help control costs without affecting anything we do in our business. One major one is power usage.

Did you know that many electronic devices continue to use power as long as they are plugged into the wall, whether the device if on or not? By simply plugging these chargers into a power board that has an on/off switch you can make it easy to insure that all of your devices are truly off when you want them to be, simply flip the switch on the power board. It is also important to remember that chargers for things like laptops and cellphones will continue to draw power as long as they are plugged into the wall, even if the chargers aren’t charging anything. Making sure you turn off/unplug all devices and chargers in the evenings and one weekends is an easy way to reduce the money you spend on utility bills and the best part is, during the day it can still be business as usual. I told you cost cutting could be easy!

Here is a brief list of things to look at for cutting out phantom power drains: Things with remote controls, anything that has a blocky looking plug or inline block converter (think laptop charger), things that have quick on features, anything that displays a clock. For further cost reductions you can also look for energy star approved electronics when making your purchases, this will ensure that you are getting the most energy efficient products you can and just by being a little more aware you can improve your business. The best part is you are also improving the environment at the same time. Not only will reducing phantom consumption cut down on the amount of coal and natural gas burned to create electricity, lowering our over all demand for power will help make transitioning to renewable resources a more feasible option.

Technorati Tags: Business, enviornment, improvement

Steven Covey, in his groundbreaking work The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, tells us to “begin with the end in mind”. The concept is to know what you want to accomplish, and to set up your tasks to assist you in reaching that goal. This is nothing more than knowing what you want to accomplish, and aligning your tasks and assignments with that goal.

Many folks get caught up in the social media craze – I admit that I did too for a while. The good news is that my personality gets ‘tired’ with things pretty easily – whether it’s posting 5-6 times per day on twitter, or connecting with acquaintances on Facebook, or answering questions in the Q&A on LinkedIn Answers. Why is that good news? Because I know that, once I ‘master’ this new application, it will lose its allure. So, I can focus on my new obsession in the knowledge that it’s only because I’m not expert at it yet; once I get there, my nature will allow me to naturally ratchet back on the time, effort, and brainpower I’ll put in on this.

Let me give you an example: when I first logged on to Twitter, I was one of the earlier adopters (I won’t say early adopters, but certainly am not a newbie to the app). I was focused on identifying posters who were interesting, humorous, leaders in their field, and leaders in my field. I grew my follower list thoughtfully (I don’t automatically follow those who follow me; and if someone follows me, I go to their profile, read 2-3 pages of the most recent posts, and decide to follow or not based on whether I want to hear what they have to say. If their entire post history are either retweets (RTs), responses (@twittername) or links to their own products (“come check out my 50% off sale!”) I don’t tend to follow them.)

My twitter followers to @marymcd has grown organically to around 1,000 – 1,100 followers – every week I gain some, and I lose some. I check out who I lose, and it’s invariably people who have followed me for 48 hours, seen that I don’t automatically follow them back, and they drop me (Twitter Quitters). Conversely, I’ve built online relationships with folks that I’ve never met IRL (In Real Life) and have a network of professionals I can tap at any given time to get their thoughts on something I’m struggling with. So, although I devoted a bunch of time to building this network, I don’t spend NEARLY that much maintaining it (and yes, I do post regularly on Twitter except when I’m travelling…)

What was my original goal? To understand this new tool, to figure out if I could build a revenue stream from it (yes, but indirectly only), and to connect with colleagues in far-flung locations. Did I accomplish this? You bet. Was it worth the effort? Yes, when I consider the friendships I’ve developed (you know who you are, @my-virtual-twitter-friends…) Am I a twitter guru? Not even close. I use the tool, and am happy with my use, but do not aspire to be a Twitter queen.

Re-examine how you are spending your time – are you doing things that support your ultimate goal? If not, why not? What can you do differently?

Technorati Tags: blogging, Business, communication, efficiency, goals, managing your time, Time Management, working smarter

If you are looking for ways to improve your business, and that is what this blog is about after all, auditing might be just what you need. When most people think about auditing they start to get concerned, they think that someone is going to come in and try to find things they are doing wrong, but this is just a misconception. Auditing isn’t about finding out what an individual person is doing wrong, its about finding weaknesses in your business system so you can improve them. I encourage anyone who is looking to improve their business to go through an internal audit.

Internal audits are great, they are relatively low cost because you are using your own people and they serve the dual purpose of cross training employees. Ideally in an internal audit each area of the business will be audited by someone who doesn’t typically work in that area. This does two things, first it brings a new set of eyes to the area which can provide a fresh perspective on how that part of the business is running. Second, and perhaps more importantly, it gives employees a better understanding how the business runs outside of their particular area.

So what should you expect from your internal audit? First you should expect to find out how well your documents match up with the reality of your business. If you find that they don’t match up well it could point to one of two problems. The first thing it could indicate is that you are failing to keep up to date documents. This means that as things are changing in the way you do business the changes aren’t getting added into your documentation. Alternatively it could point to a failure in your training methods, meaning that your documentation is correct but for some reason the employees on the floor haven’t been properly trained to follow the documentation. Either way this could present significant challenges for training new employees and controlling important factors of your business.

The second thing you should hope to get out of your internal audit process is greater cross unit functionality that will lead to better work flow. By giving employees the opportunity to learn how the business groups that surround them operate, they will naturally have a better understanding of how their work fits into the larger puzzle of the business. When employees have a greater understanding of how their work affects other areas of the business they can start looking for ways to improve the usability of their product for internal customers. For example you might find that by having someone from your sales department audit the assembly line, they find out that before a job can be started all of the information they take from the customer has to be transposed onto a work traveler for the assembly line. This takes time away from the line employees and generally slows down production, so the sales staff, instead of recording the information in their own method, starts recording it directly onto the traveler, allowing the production staff to focus on production.Without the internal audit, the sales staff may never have realized that the method of recording customer information they were using was actually creating more work then necessary for the production staff.

The final thing you can expect from you internal audit process is increased employee participation in improvement efforts. Your own employees may be your greatest untapped resource for improvement ideas, they just aren’t being encouraged to share them. By asking employees to get involved in an internal audit with the goal of improving the business it shows them that management values their opinions and wants their help to make the business better. You might be amazed at some of the great ideas your employees have for improving your business that they have just been sitting on because they figured no one cared.

The list of benefits you can get from an internal audit extends well beyond the three examples I have given here, but even if these are the only benefits you see, it will still be a great step towards improving your business. The best part is that all it takes is a little training and a day away from their usual work for your staff. This is why, for my money, internal auditing is one of the best ways to find business improvements.

Technorati Tags: Business, improvement, process improvement