Improve My Business

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

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

Both last month and this month we have talked a lot about what I consider personal practices to increase performance. Whether it is better time management, or cleaning out our to do list on a regular basis, all of these things will reduce the stress we feel at work and help us be more productive with our time. However, these practices can only help us if we turn them into habits. If we have to consciously force ourselves to do them then when we get stressed/tired/busy we will inevitably stop these practices and their benefits will go away. So for this week I want to point everyone to an article on www.lifehack.org about making habits stick. The habits the author talks about in the article aren’t necessarily the same habits we are trying to cultivate, but the advice holds true for anything you want to make a habit. Give it a read here and let me know what you think. Do you think this can help you turn the new practices we have been working on into habits?

Full link: http://www.lifehack.org/articles/productivity/6-proven-ways-to-make-new-habits-stick.html

Technorati Tags: improvement, Time Management

Spring is in full swing, at least it is here in the southern part of the country, the trees are green, the sun is out and the flower are blooming. This has me thinking more and more about spring cleaning, and today specifically about spring cleaning for your ideas. Most people have a bunch of ideas that just come to them throughout the year, and if your involved in the running of a business a lot of those ideas probably relate to your business. Many of the business people I know record their ideas either in journals, or e-mail to help them remember the ideas later when they have time to act on them. Ideas always seem to have a way of always coming to you when you don’t have time to work on them.  So today, I want to talk about doing some spring cleaning of our ideas.

First thing to do is to consolidate your ideas into a single list. This may mean pulling together multiple entries into your journal, or searching through your E-mail for notes to yourself, or maybe you just have them all rolling around in your head and just need to right them down. One way or the other it is important to get all of the ideas you have been storing up in one place so you can look at them all together. Once we have our completed list we can being sorting through our ideas using the following steps.

1. Combine. I like to start by taking ideas that are related or similar and combining them, that way I won’t accidentally through out one part of a two or three part idea.

2. Review. This will inevitably happen when you go through to combine, but you want to review your ideas with a critical eye. Things to be looking for are ideas that are no longer relevant, meaning that either your business or the business environment has changed significantly sense you had the idea and therefore it no longer seems like a good one. Other types of ideas you might want to identify are ideas that are just too out there, unless your at a place where pursuing a pretty out there idea is what you are looking for, and ideas that are too grandiose, while we all like to dream big, putting these kinds of ideas on your to do list will only stress you out.

3. Discard. Any ideas that you identified during your review you should discard from the list, the goal after all is to reduce the number of ideas we have in our idea bank, thus making room for more ideas, not to mention giving us some space to actually work on the ideas not just have them. Other items to discard from the list might include ideas that never seem to get done, if you have had the same idea for two or three years and aren’t any closer to realizing the idea then you were then, it might be time to let it go. Alternatively these types of ideas can be great candidates for our next step.

4. Organize. In this step you want to organize your ideas in order of importance. The goal is to come away with a clear picture of what the next idea you want to work on is going to be, and the one after that, and so on. Often times with so many ideas floating around it is hard to pick just one to work on, so organizing your list is a way of focusing your energy on realizing the most important ideas first. Items to look at for moving to the top of the list are probably either, recent and time sensitive ideas, or those old ideas we discussed in number 3, if they still seem like great ideas and you just can’t let them go then try to get them off your list by making them happen.

5. Get to work. Now comes the easy part right? Just start working on realizing the idea at the top of your list. I know its typically not that simple, but at least by cleaning your ideas you can get more targeted and focused and clear up some mental space to really delve into your ideas.

Another thing that some people have found helpful but that I didn’t include in the list, is making two separate lists in the organize stage, sorting ideas into big ideas and smaller ideas. Typically this is done based on the amount of time it would take to accomplish the idea. This way you can always be working on one quicker easy idea and one more long term idea. The goal in either scenario is always the same though, get your ideas in order, get rid of the ones you don’t need, and make space for working on the ones that are most important.

Technorati Tags: Business, de-clutter, goals, improvement, organizing, working smarter

We all know that the hours in the day are numbered and that we need to make the most of them. So here are some tips that I have been using to increase my personal productivity.

1. Batch your E-mails. If your like me and most of the people in my office you have an almost constant stream of E-mails coming in. The temptation is to open them all as soon as they arrive. I realized that for me at least this meant stopping what I was doing and shifting my focus on average once every 15-20 minutes throughout the work day. This was very disruptive, particularly when there was something I wanted to read further in the E-mail and it wound up being a long distraction from the task I had been working on. The solution I have found is batching my E-mail reading into groups. Basically I keep my E-mail open, but don’t read any messages unless something urgent comes in that needs immediate attention. Instead I let things build up and then just before lunch and again just before I sign off for the evening I read through everything. I find this gives me longer blocks of un-interrupted time to focus on getting the important things I need to do done, without completely ignoring what is going on in my E-mail.
2. Pick one big thing every day and do it first. For me if I have a lot of things on my to do list I find that I often avoid the big ones and do all the little “quick wins” first. While this does shorten the list, it still leaves those big projects out there looming, and by the time I have done all the little things I often don’t have the mental energy to tackle a big project. To combat this I have started coming into the office each day, having picked out one large item from my to do list to tackle that day. I start my day off by first checking to make sure no urgent messages came in overnight, then getting right to work on my one big thing for the day. I don’t check E-mails, or make phone calls, or do anything else until I have knocked out my one big task. This has two benefits for me. First it gets those big tasks off the to do list in a timely manner, and second, I find myself having more energy throughout the day because I know that I have already accomplished something big and don’t have the stress of trying to find the energy late in the day to do a big project.
3. Have a defined plan. Beyond picking your one thing, I have also found it helpful to have a defined plan for the week. In other words I try to look at what I need to get done and slot it all into my week. This way I am not sitting here on Tuesday afternoon or worse on Thursday staring at my to do list and wondering how I am ever going to get it all done. I know how it is going to get done because I have already budgeted the time in my head. Of course my schedule gets shifted around a little bit as things come up, and it is important to remain flexible, but knowing what is on your list and what kind of time commitment it takes, then figuring out where you can make that time commitment can help overcome the feeling of overwhelm that comes with big to do lists.
4. Attitude is everything. Having a better attitude at work makes you more productive. If you feel like you have been productive you will continue to be more productive. This is what is really behind the other tips I have listed here, they all help me feel productive, which improves my attitude, and makes me more productive. Sometimes you even need to go so far as to force yourself to change your attitude, even if it seems superficial at first. If you tell yourself you have lots of energy and are ready to get something done, before you know it, it will be true. On the other hand if you sit around all day dreaming about a nap, you’re just going to make yourself more tired. So take a minute every now and then to check in on your attitude towards work and adjust it as needed.

Technorati Tags: efficiency, email, goals, improvement, managing your time, Planning, Time Management, working smarter