Process Improvement: Maximize Limited Resources

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Process Improvement: Maximize Limited Resources

Written by Leanne Hoagland Smith

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Selling for Managers

Limited Resources
All businesses - for profit and not-for-profits - have limited resources of:

Time
Energy
Money
Emotions

How these limited resources are best used will determine if they die, just barely survive or thrive.

More often than not, there is confusion within any organization. This confusion wastes these limited resources; creates conflicted results or, worse yet, no results and drains profits.

After reading numerous postings, articles, journals and books about social media, leadership, competitors, employee productivity to rules within the workplace, I realized there exists a lot of confusion in the marketplace. Of course this confusion is good for those who deliver potential solutions from business authors, consultants and coaches.

What may be driving this confusion are these three culprits:

Lack of clarity
Ineffective to no processes (procedures, policies and plans)
Poor communication

Maximize Your Limited Resources
After 10 years of working with a variety of organizations from the smallest to rather larger ones (excess of 5,000 employees), the inability to see clouds the decision-making process. Formal proven assessments help to increase clarity and this does improve decision making respective to how to better maximize the limited resources both individually and organizationally. Business coaching tip: An organization is just a collection of individuals working together to achieve specific goals unattainable by each individual.

When processes are non-existent or poorly written, this keeps people from engaging in best practices. What begins to happen is people start walking their own path while thinking they are performing or meeting expectations in the best way possible. Years ago, W. Edwards Deming showed "believing and innovative" Japanese manufacturers how process improvement works much to the later chagrin of unbelieving American manufacturers.

Poor communication is probably one of the most visible culprits for wasted resources. A friend just shared with me she received a FedEx next-day delivery letter from a company that informed her she failed to cash a check for 58 cents. This communication has drained the bottom line by at least $200 due to everyone who had touched this communication. Not only has this company a communication problem, it also suffers from bad processes.

Failed execution is usually a sign of confusion while re-dos also suggest confusion. When organizations re-engage in any aspect of the delivery products or services and the related supporting services such as strategy execution, accounting, etc., then confusion is present.

So the next time you do not receive the results that you want for your business or yourself, seek to discover if confusion was present. Of course, this may require a perspective from someone else because sometimes many of us cannot see the forest for the trees.

Leanne Hoagland Smith
		About the author:
		Leanne Haogland-Smith has over 25 years in sales. Her true joy is selling and helping clients unlock the results that they want. She holds a core belief that the majority of answers are within each individual or organization and, sometimes, people just need an outside perspective to help them discover those answers. Leanne has written more than 1000 articles on sales and process improvement. Learn more about Leanne at www.processspecialist.com .