In a client’s meeting management narrated how future business growth is promising, exciting and challenging in their fast paced environment. Profits are so good they need to hire temporary staff to keep up with customer demands. Reviewing their profits, margins, costs, operations, performance metrics and observing employee behaviors…looking at my client, I said, quote, “Gee, you people are just too busy to be productivity”, unquote. Paradox? Conundrum? Yes, irony operating efficiently. Assuredly, the client’s pace is fast; employees are excitedly challenged keeping up with business demands thinking on their feet, as there is no time to sit.
More observations indicated employee turnover, low morale, unmade decisions, late deliveries, conflict, someone else will do it, not-my-job, what happens now, broken communications paths, confusion, excuses, anxiety, growing customers-clients complaints, power struggles and errors that precipitates need for temporary staffing or permanent employees lay off - devouring profits.
Many companies labor under this delusion “if there is a profit, positive cash flow and busy employees it equals productivity”. Productivity is a balanced fluid organic mechanical correlation between energy, time, process, standards, configuration, processes, operations, weaknesses, strengths, systems, quality, risk, resources, morale, effort, production, money, employee growth and customer desires that equals output within an adaptable and flexible fixed structure. Sadly 95% of all start-ups to the “Fortune 50’s” operate at a loss - despite positive cash flow and bottom-line profits…interestingly, none of them realize they are losing time and money.
How do you know you are losing potential money? Or, if your company is in that 95% losing money…what do you do? Possible solutions: Cut staff? Eliminate free coffee? Cut benefits? Stop capitalized expense? Decrease inventory? Terminal development? End holiday parties? That is a plan to reduce spending; however, it does not save money, increase productivity or profits. Here is another approach increasing productivity and profits: maintain continuity, review logistics – tactics - strategies, assess policies, evaluate organization, analyze business operations, evaluate equipment/facilities utilization, regroup staff resources, eliminate redundancies, recover wasted time and streamline business units, and operations.
At the outset this looks like an enormous task to work through an organizational horizontally and vertically streamlining operations. In reality, it is very simply based on principles of work duty, performance, distribution, accountability, commit to action, cross-function, continuity, pre-decision, control of variance, continuous improvement, time, motion, method, ergonomics and human factors. These principles are embedded in “Productivity Unified Interactive Methodology” which; is the successful integrated blending of Balanced Scorecard, CMMI-5, ISO 9000, IEEE, ANSI, Six-Sigma, Lean, 5S, ZD-SCP, Activity Based Costing/Management Methodologies to deliver sensible resolutions for increased productivity in combination with “Correlative Organic Cyclical Business Modeling”.
Take the definition of one rule for example; “Pre-Decision”: Simply stated “Pre-Decision” is a set business process rule to mitigate variance. Variance impedes productivity affecting profit, time resulting in increased customer and employee distress. Case in point: You stand on-line to transact activities with a bank teller or fast food server. A customer in front of you creates a situation outside the normal business process. Where there was one employee, now three employees work on the irregularity to decide resolution resulting in slower service and customer distress. “Pre-Decision” allows one employee to render a quick decision.
In closing, a critical factor is how do you determine if streamlining company operations will cost more money and effort than profits gained and losses recovered as these questions:
- How do you recognize symptoms of lost profit potential?
- What is the real cost of doing business?
- How do you streamline operations?
- Do you cut expenses too increase profits?
- If you cut expenses will your company have the resilience to respond to employee growth, customer demands and changing markets?
- Do you implement “Productivity Unified Interactive Methodology” and “Correlative Organic Cyclical Business Modeling?”
- How do you make the solutions scaleable to your productivity requirements?
- Whether your business is manufacturing, service or transactional is your company too busy to be productivity?
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