Double your profit: its function divided by wastage

11 major attributes of leadership

"To err is human": 80% of your decisions are wrong

My title is true if you make these decisions alone, with no consensus or consultations or considering the opinions from your spouse or close friends or peers. Listen to them and make them part of your decision making process. Making the move alone or even believing on your guts can be your biggest mistake.
Nothing is more assuring than asking your customers what they want from your products or services rather than assuming that your products or services are good enough for them.
Listen from someone you trust before making all your business decisions. It makes a lot of sense to knowing your short comings in advance than facing the consequence of the wrong decision. Make your organization work for you.

Make solutions work for you

"That's what I like about Lord Young. While you all bring me problems, he brings me solutions."
MARGARET THATCHER

Have you ever wondered why your business wasted too much time and money solving unnecessary problems? Problems that were not supposed to be there in the first place. Do you realize that a significant amount of these unnecessary problems were in fact imported or brought in from outside of your organization? Where did these problems come from?
Unnecessary problems are unknowing imported into your business through your daily business activities. They didn’t sneak in; in fact they came in through your gates quite freely. Its like computer viruses infected your computer system that has no firewall installed. Some came in as via the unofficial routes and you even paid for a good portion of these problems ‘appearance fees’ to be in your business.
These problems can cause hiccups to the smooth running of your business machine. It’s like an opposite force that pulls you against the direction of your intended motion. What are they actually? They include all the problems related to the following;
1. Employees related
. Corrupt and irresponsible officers
. Hand phones and internet nuisance
. Never give a damn about recruitment filtering
2. Machines and equipments related
. Purchase of improper or poor quality tools and equipments for your processes.
. Careless maintenance
. Installation of invalidated systems for your operation
3. Methods and procedures related
. No written job description and work procedures
. Marketing and sales assumptions that are not based on facts
. Usage of unofficial imported methods to carry out routine operations
4. Materials related
. Regardless to reuse, recycle and recover materials in operation process
. Usage of under specification materials
. Uncoordinated material procurement activities
These subheadings can guide you to listing down all the unnecessary problems that you have led them dwelled in your business.
Now, it’s time for you to take appropriate actions and make sure these problems will not get into your business once and for all. How? Well, if you are stopping spy wares or computer viruses from getting into you laptop, your have to install firewalls, anti-spies, and anti-viruses software. To ensure that your ‘firewall’ is effective, adhere to these simple 3 steps.
First, meet with all key personnel in your organization and instruct them to only bring in only solutions to their operation daily. A 45-minute meeting is sufficient for this purpose. Don’t have time, then plan one. Block the time in you daily planner i.e. 45 minutes from 9:00am to 9:45am. Remember, you want to hear only SOLUTIONS to your listed problems not problems. Make this habit a culture in your daily routine of you business.
Second, make sure to put 300% effort to track down every process in your business operation. How can you to get 300% effort? Selected 2 of you very best employees and make them put in 100% effort each to forming your mastermind group alliance.
Third, take prompt actions. Go through every single solution; document and implement them.

Measure of quality: not from inside but from outside

Very often when a new business, say a restaurant, opens its door in your neighborhood, you'd notice that many customers would first "give it a try" comparing the services, taste, and prize of the foods to other existing outlets. Having realised that his business is OK, the owner would provide some plus services to inaugurate the event. Things are looking good, business is good. Well not for long…..unless he is willing to give 300% to his new business from the start.
As weeks went by, when customers already noticed nothing new is happening in the products or services they are receiving, their number will drop, unnoticed in the beginning. The owner might not give a damn, who cares it's just one of those days, the owner might think; after all, not every day is Sunday.
When still nothing really happen, the number of customers will slide further down. By this time, the owner would notice the trend, but would think that nothing had gone wrong with his operation. May be, he thinks, by reintroduce the plus service that was given during the opening days, things might just swing back up. "I always keep my quality at par" comforting his feeling as he waits for the up swing turn.
He kept his quality level. By his simple logic reasoning the number of customers shouldn't be reducing, it should be about the same, and yet he is not making as days gone by. By this time the owner may have created few convincing reasons or alibi for not being successful. To stop his losses from going out of control he is forced to shut down his operation.
Why is this happening? Despite of keeping the quality of his products and services at a constant quality, he couldn’t maintain the satisfaction level of his customers. He is wrong when he judged his products and services based on his initial set of values, but instead he should look his business through the eyes of his customers.
Customers are constantly seeking the plus (VALUES) in the products or services they buy. The plus that the owner reintroduced might not satisfy them now, they have already got better from his competitors; so naturally that they want a little extra or better from him this time, unfortunate he doesn’t offer them.
You see, competitiveness demands you to be creative all the time. One method that has been proven successful is by continuous improvement in your operational processes. In fact, when one of your operational processes is already stabilized, just like an airplane reaches its cruising speed, you should be starting to look for ways to improve in all points of the said process.
Lets say you have 5 points that make up the process, and by focusing on the continuous improvement process you found that points #3 and #4 can be combined and subsequently reducing your handling time and also cost, why wait? – carry it out immediately, documented it and let it run so as to enjoy the immediate benefit.
Wouldn’t it be better if you could share your innovation partly with your customers? There you are, your customer would be very pleased to come to you……..Your next job is to look for some more, don’t ever stop, so that you can continue offer new innovative benefits to your customers again and again and again. You can’t stop them from coming; can you? - they will keep on comin’.
Now, always keep busy because improvements can only be made when you are busy. Measure your success by counting the number of customers that keep on coming. It would be nice if they bring along their friends or neighbors to share what you are ready to offer them.

Can't run away from problems

Your business must continue running even though you are facing problems that often come in without prior notice. Though sometimes you might have gotten the symtoms, but too often you'll ignore them because you are occupied with other unsolved problems that had been around for days of even months. It seems endless. They just kept on piling just like unsolved cases in a private detective's office.
You are about to confront them like a hungry frog crossing a freeway in a drizzling night looking for decent dinner. Well, good luck then. Going after the root causes of your business problems require you to be 300% fit. You got to have the burning desire for victory and be aroused to convert them into innovations instead.
"How can I do that?" you might ask. Well, first, know your trade really hard; if you are an engineer do all the calculations or simulations well in advance before kicking off the project. Second, be married the details of the project.....what I mean is, be on site all the time....Yes be FOCUS. Third, if you are working in a group, make sure that you guys are acting on the instruction from a single common source, that is, your group's concenseous.
All the information gathered in the above three steps are your sword and armour against the problems you might be facing. Having won the battle, your sword is still sharp and your armour is unscratched.
Always be ahead of your problems. The problems in your workplace are in fact your creations, created by your miscalculations and assumptions.

"Take it as it comes"

"Dont take home with it". Your business problems belong in their respective birth places. Taking them away from their source will not eliminate their root cause.
Get your business problems out of your way well ahead of time. Do this by facing them directly "in between their eyes" everyday at work. Regard your problems as a new chapter towards achieving your goals and objectives. It will get more interesting as you go through solving them, thus creating a passage for a new on comming chapters.
Problems are your catalyst to your creativity