Identifying ways of improving your business, including changes in efficiency and procedure can be a daunting task. It is very easy to see the routines and methods which you’re applying and earnestly following as immovable. Yet often it is the very aspects of your business which you believe immovable and essential which can be causing the most drag when it comes to trying to hit the gas and accelerate your business to where you want to be going. Take some of the most routine procedures in your business, and ask yourself whether there is any possible way in which they could be done differently. Or – and here’s a more radical thought – done away with all together?
Eliminate
As an example of this, I was recently working on a consultation project with a business which employed a set routine for dealing with those customers experiencing hardship. I noticed a large number of customers were being declined, and asked what the procedure was. It seemed that the customers were required to send in their income and outgoings statement, following which a decision was made.
The point was, however, that although the business was stating that the financial statement was necessary for a decision to be made, it was never looked at. The document was simply filed away, and a decision made quite independently. The most revealing aspect was the reaction to my suggestion that the procedure be abolished. The business claimed that it couldn’t do that as it was an essential procedure.
Too often we can get weighed down with procedures and routines, and any way of improving your business and developing its efficiency is going to have to result in introducing changes which will necessarily challenge those aspects which you currently take for granted.
Innovation Requires Courage
One of the best ways of illustrating this apparent inability to think through the logic of a business can be found in the way people volunteer. Or, rather, in the way they don’t. I often do presentations for businesses, and one of the things I can guarantee is the reaction when I ask for a volunteer. The room goes silent, and no one offers. If I’d asked everyone beforehand, then I would probably have a large number of people offering help, but the difference is that now they are being asked to stand out from the crowd and use their gut.
In most situations we have two major assets which we can bring in order to evoke a response or action – our head and our gut. We can think through problems and we can feel through them. In the case of the volunteers, being asked beforehand would have resulted in them using their head, but being put in the position of having to step forward, to be first – that involves using gut. The challenge is simply this – that for our business to succeed, and to be efficient, we have to use both.
The truth is that when it comes to improving your business you are going to have to think through changes, and feel through them; you’re going to have to consider the efficiency of the business, and of your routines and procedures, and feel through them too.
It’s important that, in almost any situation, we have to have the courage to volunteer, to go first. We have to be brave enough to try something new, and not only have the guts to do this, but the head to understand why, and what the potential benefits are.
Rule of 72
There’s another example I often give people, and I call it the Rule of 72. All too often we can be looking around at the world and being aware of trillion dollar fiscal packages and technological revolutions, but in terms of day to day situations we can often use the rule of 72. Put simply this means that if I divide the compounded interest rate into the number 72, then I can find out how long it will take for my money to double. For example, a compounded interest rate of 7.2% will take ten years to double.
How does this translate to improving your business? The rule of 72 can reveal that if you improve by a margin of just 1% each day, then in 72 days you will be twice as good as you are now. Imagine taking this further, beyond 72 days to 72 weeks, or even over a lifetime. The possibilities become astonishing, although the daily progress might seem quite small at first.
Fear of Failure
The trouble is that many of us don’t begin this program of improvement out of the sheer fear of failure. When Richard Branson started his Virgin airline he asked himself what the worst that could happen might be. He calculated that it would be to lose a million dollars a year. He decided he could accept that, and moved on.
If you’re in a rut, stuck in routines and procedures, thinking with your head but not your gut and afraid to take that first step towards progress, afraid to be the volunteer to start something new, then improving your business is always going to remain an idea. The changes in efficiency will remain on your to do list, and you’ll always be wondering when the time is right. The time is right – now.
‘Helping Leaders build great organisations”
(C) Daniel Lock.
