As you may know, I am in the process of building a chicken coop. This is one of my two goals during the April quarantine. The other goal is to help as many people as possible which has been progressing as well.
When I’m out in my woodworking shop, the dogs are typically with me. I have two red fox Labradors: a 6-year-old and an 11-month-old.
JacX, our 11-month-old, likes to find things to chew on. Yesterday, it was a piece of scrap wood, which I took away from her. A few minutes later, she found a piece of Styrofoam to chew. I asked her to come and she brought it over to me and without hesitation dropped it in my hand. After that, she came from the yard with a stick, which she lay down on the patio to chew. I again asked her to bring it to me and I put it out of reach. I then gave her a rawhide and she headed off to chew that.
I think we can take a lesson from JacX. A lot of us have been confined to our houses. First the shops closed, then the restaurants, and now even the parks are closed. Each time, we had to make a choice to find something else to do with our time. The replacement activities may not be our first choice, but we can look at this as an opportunity to find something new to experience.
Our lives will go back to some sort of “normal” eventually. But right now, we need to use this time to develop new skills, explore new interests, or embrace those around us.
And if all else fails, we can curl up in the sun and take a nap.
The past week was consumed with planning for either working remotely or adopting social distancing guidelines for businesses that remained open. But, this week has been a little different as the planning phase has been completed and now it is time to execute the plan. And, if you are like me, you have a little more unstructured time on your hands. So, the question is – how do we make the most of this time?
Last fall, after returning from a journey on the Camino Frances, I spent a lot of time learning how to be more intentional – with my time and my focus. Through this, I developed some great tools that I use every day, week and month to keep me focused on the right things. I think these tools are very helpful, especially as we face our current situation. At the bottom of this post are links to those articles.
If you want to skip through reading the posts and go right to execution, I have compiled all of them into a single presentation that I can review with your or your team. All you need to do is send me an email, or call me (360-975-8110) and we can get an on-line meeting scheduled.
We will get through this time! And we might as well make the most of it! It definitely beats binge watching Game of Thrones, baking cookies (I mean, where did all those flour hoarding bakers come from?) or playing drinking games every time someone on TV says COVID-19.
This past week has changed all of our lives. I don’t think any of us could have predicted the canceling of sporting events, closing of schools or even suspending travel from Europe.
We have been working non-stop, trying to reach our goals, closing new deals, striving to grow our business.
But, all of a sudden – things have ground to a halt. And we have time on our hands, time that we have never had before.
Yes, there is some fear about what the future holds. But, what we do know is that things will improve. Our lives will resume. Our businesses will rebound.
But what can we do right now? How can I get my team to get the work done when we aren’t in the same office? Or, now that I have a little extra time on my hands – how can I use it wisely?
Now is the perfect time to stop and sharpen your tools. This includes:
Formulating a plan around a business opportunity you have had in the back of your mind
Enhancing your team’s time management skills to increase productivity and effectiveness
Creating an action plan around executing on a key strategic initiative
Improving your sales team’s close ratio
I’ve done these types of sessions with many teams and they have achieved tremendous benefits including:
Increased close ratio from 50% to 90%
Formulated and executing on a strategic plan in less than 90 minutes with the entire management team
Enhanced productivity by 30% for an engineering team
Let’s use this time to be as productive as possible. Call me (360-975-8110), text me or email me. We can get through this together!
I was never a big fan of process flow maps. It seemed like such a tedious activity, which in my opinion didn’t do much but capture an already obvious process. But that all changed a few years ago. I was working with some Six Sigma Black Belts to develop a hands-on course on how to apply process control tools to the investment casting industry. We knew what we wanted to teach, we knew how we wanted to teach it, but we kept struggling with how to get where we wanted to go. After a few months of minimal progress, I mapped out the steps of the process we wanted the students to follow, identifying decisions that needed to be made and delays that could impact the flow.
What a game changer! This flow chart has become invaluable to students and to the instructors when we teach the class. Our instructors agree that mapping out the process was a turning point, and we often ask ourselves what took us so long to start using this tool, especially since it was a tool we were trying to teach the students to use.
A few weeks ago, I was mapping out a process for a client and we identified some delays that could be avoided if we added some steps earlier in the process. We also identified ways to increase customer satisfaction by adding a few minor steps at strategic points in the process.
Are you looking for ways to increase throughput without adding resources? Try process flow mapping. This can highlight gaps, opportunities for improvement and non-value-added steps. By addressing those, you can reduce delays, improve consistency and increase capacity. If you want help getting started, send me an email! I’d love to help you!
A thriving business needs a product, sales, leadership, and innovation.
Here is how each of these contribute to the success of a business:
The product is the cornerstone of the business.
Sales provides cash flow to continue producing the product and to fund the business.
Leadership sets the vision and focuses your resources in the right direction.
Innovation creates new products, improves the way things are done, and helps implement the details behind the vision.
My consulting practice focuses on improving my clients’ profitability by focusing on these areas for any thriving business: Leadership, Innovation, and Sales.
Let me give you an example. A mid-sized manufacturing company was selling product in the highly competitive automotive industry. Their production line was struggling, resulting in $80,000 in scrap every month. This was crippling their company and damaging relationships with their key customers, because they couldn’t deliver their product on time.
I was able to quickly identify what was causing their scrap issues. Together, we put processes in place to address the gaps and strengthen existing systems. Once this was complete, I trained the engineers, supervisors, and operators on the new processes. Within six months, the cost of scrap fell to just $1,200 per month and throughput increased.
With additional capacity, stronger processes, and greater technical depth, the company was poised to pivot to a higher-margin, less-competitive industry. But in order to do that, they needed to develop a strategy for their sales and marketing team. Using my background in sales, understanding of the company’s plant capabilities, and the needs of the target industry, I led the sales team through the transition. Within a year, they had gained the recognition of the industry as a supplier who delivered on time with excellent quality. The company has been able to grow sales in their target market at a 20% increase year over year with a gross margin more than triple their automotive margin.
If your company wants to strengthen its internal processes in order to transition into a new market, I can lead you through the process, providing guidance and expertise along the way. Email me today to start on your journey tomorrow.
