Would you like to save money without
spending money? Want to get in on a little-known secret for personal
& professional success? Would you like to amaze your supervisor,
serve your business more effectively, and—while you are at
it—enhance your resume? Businesses of today want to see results.
If you constantly deliver measurable results you will become a more
valuable resource for your company. Here is a simple way to change
your entire outlook on success.
You need to learn to Quantify,
Baseline, Change, & Measure what you accomplish. If, for
instance, you want to improve your internal purchasing process, you
first have to establish and place a value on where that process
stands—right this minute. Stop right there! I know what you are
thinking. You probably hate the concept of statistical analysis as
much as I do.
“Unfortunately, the vast majority of
companies, especially small companies, tend to over-complicate nearly
every new idea they discover."
Quit trying to force perfection through
increase complication. Don't make the process improvement concept
confusing—it doesn't need to be. Try these very basic success ideas to change your range.
Quantify & Baseline
Take a close look at your current
acquisition process. How well is it working? How many steps does
your company pass through to get from thinking about a need; to
acquiring the product or service; to distributing the product or
activating the service; to actually making use of the product or
service? List these steps out, in the order that they occur—just
like that rough historical time-line you created in middle school.
You do not need to purchase a complicated computer program to perform
this review—a sheet of lined notebook paper will do just fine.
Place one step on each line. Take some time to ensure that your list
includes every step in the current process—however minor it may be.
Did you create your list? Good. Now,
number each item on that list. You can now clearly state that
completing 100% of the process under review consists of “X”
number of steps. In this single very basic list, you have created a
simplified way to measure the process as well as established a
baseline for where you stand.
Process Change
Now that you have your baseline, walk
through the list of steps and identify each one as a.) must
have—vital to the process, b.) good to have, c.) neutral, d.) not
necessary. Now, technically, in process improvement, you should only
change one thing at a time—so pick one of the “not necessary”
steps and work the process without that step. Did the process work?
Look carefully. If the process still works after removing the step,
the chances are extremely high that you can eliminate that step. Do
this for each “unnecessary” step—always ensuring that the
process is still effective after each change. Next, move on to the
“neutral” steps. Repeat for the “good to have” steps.
“Big News: You do not have to rush
your changes. In fact pushing change on the people around you is a
nearly guaranteed way to ensure that you fail. Bring change in
slowly. Let people get used to the small things, then work your way
up.”
You may decide that, instead of
completely removing some steps, the process improves when you combine
two or more elements. That is perfectly fine. Now, here is the key:
Always keep your original list of process steps as your initial
baseline. If your process originally required 40 distinct steps, and
you reduced those steps to 20, you have achieved a 50% reduction in
the process complexity. This could easily be quantified as a 100%
improvement in effectiveness or in efficiency and it cost you
basically nothing but some time and a slightly more focused line of
thought.
What you will have accomplished, if you
work on this methodology for analyzing your environment and
initiating, then measuring, change, is a standard for process
improvement.
Take Note: To accomplish these results,
you didn't need complicated formulas; No high-level mathematical
gymnastics; No highly paid consultants—you just plain simplified
the entire concept.
Now, if you take this concept one step
further and place a monetary value on each reduction, you will also
be able to determine how much you have saved the company with your
improvements. Again, don't complicate the process. We are not trying
to launch a probe to Venus—we just want to improve our operations.
By the way, if your process steps take
up more than fifty lines to document, you are very probably out of
control—or you have combined several processes into one gigantic
lump of confusion. If this is the case, break down the individual
processes, streamline each, then see if they can be recombined in
their streamlined form.
Is this all there is to Quantifying,
Baselining, Changing, & Measuring? Not a chance. It is, however,
more than enough to conduct a very good analysis on the vast majority
of processes that the average small to medium business asset manager
will encounter.
|
