Improving Efficiency in Your Business
20 August 09Would you like to get the job done faster whilst maintaining high quality? How can you go about being more efficient in your business? If you can be more efficient in your business, it gives you the opportunity to gain more business to produce a better profit margin and a better quality of life.
To become more efficient in your business you need to look at the following:
Get the right people in the right roles:
In his groundbreaking book, Good to Great, Jim Collins explains the concept of ‘the bus' when assembling the right team. The main point is to first get the right people on the bus (and the wrong people off the bus) before you figure out where to drive it. There may be some people in your business who are not the right people. If you have the right people, but they may be in the wrong seats and therefore, doing the wrong thing.
Getting team buy-in:
A better motivated team will work harder and take pride in their work. This should increase the speed of production and also improve the quality of products that are being produced. There are many different financial and non-financial ways for you to motivate your team. There is no secret formula to motivating people. It is an individual thing. Some are motivated by money, others are motivated by personal recognition for a job well done.
Training:
Training your team to give them more skills and knowledge is a cost to your business and a loss of productive time. However, this time should be more than offset by the improvements in the team. Train your team on the most efficient way of doing things, or on the technical skills required to complete their job. Take it further by documenting the steps each team member should follow after the training takes place. This can be documented systems or procedures, so that other team members can ‘self-train'.
Equipment:
Ensure you have the tools or equipment in place to make you more efficient. This is a capital investment, so ensure that what you invest in will reap rewards. Having the right technology software or tools will not only improve efficiency, but will help attract team members to your business.
Set business wide performance standards:
Get the team together and set standards on how long things should take to be produced. For example, if you are producing something, you may set a 10 day job turnaround standard. If you are providing services, you may formulate a sales process which stipulates timeframes for each step of the service. Once you have set the time frame with the team, work out what you need to start doing, stop doing and continue doing to meet these standards.
If you would like some further information, please do not hesitate to contact us on 07 5413 9300.
Kind regards,
Melanie Jacobson, Director
Jodie Thompson, Director
Wayne Patten, Director
