Every business owner has many things to do each day, each week and each month. Managing waste is not always seen as a priority, but it is important to remember that it is.
Hunting out ways of reducing waste can make a real difference to your business. It can make a difference to the efficiency of your team and their workflow, as well as to your customers, your profits and your overall security and success.
And it does not take as long as you think…
Here is a three-step approach to flushing out the waste in your business. This approach will identify the everyday tasks that are harbouring waste and will engage your team in the ongoing pursuit of a more profitable and effective business.
Prepare well:
- Get your hands on a pile of yellow and blue post-it notes and plenty of pens
- Take 8 sheets of flipchart paper and on each of the first 7 write down an area of the business where you believe waste could be an issue, leaving the last sheet blank
- Book 2 x 30-minute training sessions with your team (a week apart) in a space that has at least one blank wall – your ‘waste wall’
Training session 1:
Find the waste
STOP your people ‘doing’ for 30 minutes and ask them “What one thing is making your job harder than it should be?”.
LISTEN to their comments and ask them to write something down on a yellow post-it note and place it on the blank flipchart sheet.
Categorise each post-it note in turn
- Which of the 7 areas of the business do their suggestions address (it could be more than one)?
- Use the time-cost grid to identify STLC (short-term, low-cost) waste reduction actions for the suggestions
- Choose one STLC waste reduction action for one of the suggestions and implement immediately – ACT FAST
Add to the post-it pile
Ask your people to add more ideas on the blue post-it notes to the blank flipchart sheet during the next week, whenever they think of something.
Training Session 2:
- Do the maths for the STLC waste reduction you have already implemented
- Categorise the wastes identified on the blue post-it notes
- Choose the next issue to solve
This needs to become a continuous process within your business. It absorbs only 30 minutes of team time per week and surely eliminating waste, becoming more efficient and improving your profits are worth 30 minutes.
