I bet you said “Yes.” But are you sure you listed benefits? If you bear with me for another 10 seconds, I would like to test a theory about you.

Recap your answers – maybe even writing. Now a list of the top 5 things your business. In other words, what are your 5 core services? What are the 5 main features of your product?

If your first list looks anything like your second, chances are you’re confusing the characteristics of the benefits. As a result, it is likely that your marketing materials are not participating in his client. Customers do not want to know what you can do. They want to know what you can do for them.

Do not talk about the features, benefits interviews.

Do not be alarmed. You are not alone. Most business owners and marketing are so close to your product or service that has a lot of trouble distinguishing benefits of the features of your offer. Ask a web host “, what are the benefits of your service?” And you will probably hear something along the lines of, “we offer load-balanced server clusters.” But that is not a benefit … that’s what they do. The advantage is the uptime and performance.

In fact, many people believe that the features instead of benefits that can work in your favor – that the dramatic effect. If you can accurately identify your benefits, and convey the benefits of its market, it will be light years ahead of most of its competition. You will turn leads into sales, while still bogged down trying to promote features.

So if you ever sat down to write a sales letter and wondered how it will capture the attention of your reader, or have you ever been ‘in circles writing draft after draft of web copy without giving in White, now you know where it goes wrong.

The only question remaining is how you do it right? Advertising copywriters and website copywriters do it all the time – and most of the time, do the benefits. Profit is the editor of the holy grail. But if you are not an experienced writer, how to identify the benefits you offer your customers?

There are several ways to identify the benefits they offer. This article discusses just three:
1) Customer Research
2) Talk to your sales team
3) Make it easy for customers to get Buy-In

The method you choose depends on your time constraints, budget, and level of customer interaction.

1) Customer Research
The most obvious way to identify the benefits is to ask your existing customers. They are spending big money on your offer, so you can be sure they know what they’re getting benefit from it. (In many cases it may be useful to ask what benefits they would like to be getting from you too!) Unfortunately, like everyone else, your customers are busy people. In most cases, you will not get useful information by simply sending an email inquiry. You have to make it easier for them to respond, and you have to make it worthwhile. Think of the questionnaires and surveys for quantitative data and interviews and focus groups for qualitative data. These techniques are simple, but you still have to ensure that properly interpret the results. And always remember that they are the methods of self-report. People sometimes tell you what they think you want to hear. (That’s why we have the word your questions carefully -. Try not to ask leading questions) Of course, there are plenty of other research techniques around. Do a little homework and find the methods that best suit your business needs. But do not get carried away by the possibilities. All research data in the world is meaningless if we are not speaking the language of your customer.

2) Talk to your sales team
Unfortunately, not all businesses can afford to invest in market research. If your budget does not stretch enough, try talking to your sales staff. Are in the field every day, talking to customers. And because their livelihood depends on their success in attracting customers, the more likely it will be able to tell what your customers want to know. (A word of warning, though … Be careful not to make promises high. Unlike your sales team, written warranty does not create a relationship with your customers. Customers will not make allowances, so you can only stretch the truth now writing before your credibility suffers. Indeed, if it does push the limits, it is more likely to be held to your word!)

3) Make it easy for customers to get Buy-In
If you do not have the budget for research in depth customer and you have a sales team, a good tip is to imagine how your customer gets buy-in from your boss. Very often, decision-making is a person higher up the food chain live audience. Your audience will probably be the main actor – who will be the user of your product, or the recipient of the service. However, when they find an offer they like, there’s a good chance you will have to sell it to someone higher up the line. If you can make the sale easier, you have one foot in the door. Do not just appeal to the sensibilities of their audience directly. You also need to ask yourself what you need to know to convince the decision-making. If the decision maker is a CFO, think Return on Investment (ROI) and total cost of ownership (TCO). If the decision maker is a CIO or MIS, where performance, technological sustainability, availability, manageability and ease of integration. If the decision maker is a CEO, that responsibility, risk management and return on investment. And only use jargon to prove you know your stuff. Remember … jargon will probably have to who makes the final decision scratching their heads, without your checkbook.

There are many ways to identify many more benefits. This is only a very superficial snapshot of some techniques that you might like to try. At least they’ll have to think about the benefits.

At the end, the message is simple. Forget all the fancy talk about complicated revolutionary marketing principles. Forget the new age of hard sell advertising quick-fixes. Forget looking to so-called “experts” to find solutions. Just think about the benefits. And if you can do that with accuracy, the rest is just mechanics. Once you know what to write, simply put pen to paper. And that’s a whole other story!

1. What Is The Main Goal Of The Company?

- You all know that you need the job to make a living and earn profits for the company. Still, not everyone is clear about what the company’s core all about

- Your main focus for team building should be a review the of the employee’s orientation of the company’s goal and objectives

- If you produce goods, what is the product really all about? What message do you want to impart to people as a company?

- If you deal with services, what is your main goal and what service do you actually provide?

- By reviewing these goals, a team member would have a fresh outlook about the company, making them strive harder to reach that common goal

2. What Factors Caused Poor Team Performance In The Past?

Look into your company’s successes and failures. Determine which area is in need of improvement and look for ways to do so. By looking into the strengths and weaknesses that each member exhibits, you would know which areas to improve on. Also, this would give you an idea of how to optimize the team’s strengths to reach that common goal and contribute to the company’s success.

3. How Can You Improve The Way Team Members Interact?

Even siblings of the same genes make up different personalities. As a team, you are made up of individuals from different cultures, and would have various ideas on how to improve the way your company operates. There is bound to be friction of some kind since your team is made up of different individuals. Team building aims to avoid this and bridge the gap by coming up with activities which bond the group. Thinking of fun activities to break the ice and personalize the interaction between members is a great way to start.

4. How Can You Improve The Team’s Ability To Solve Problems?

Every company is faced with challenges every now and then. One way to forge team solidarity is to look into past problems and see how they were solved. Ask each team member how they would have handled that particular problem. This would let a leader know which team member has good problem solving, analytical and critical thinking skills. The team members may be asked to share ideas and decide together which solution would suit the problem best. This is another way to build team solidarity.

4. How Can You Forge The Support And Trust Level Between Team Members?

A team leader should have people and management skills. However, it is still important for the leader to earn the trust of his team members. Supporting each other is a vital quality that a team should have. Even a simple problem like an employee who disobeys out of sheer contrariness should be looked into. What is causing this team member to contradict his superior? What can be done to improve his attitude? By team building, you can some up with ways to build trust and increase the support level between colleagues.

5. How Can You Apply The Team Building Activities In The Day-To-Day Operation Of The Company?

In the end, after all the activities that the team has performed together, there should be a sharing of experiences and thoughts on what each member has learned about their peers and about the company’s goal. These should make them aware of how they can further contribute to the company’s success in the future. All in all, team building activities enhance team solidarity. It is good to remember that the whole organization is team working towards the company’s main goal. After a set of fun and team building activities which inspire team spirit, each member would have a clear idea of how to improve their attitude towards their peers, their superiors, and especially towards their work.

Did you know that, in some cases, the fee charged by a recruitment agency may actually be less than handling the recruitment in-house? People often turn to an executive search firm when they have had trouble recruiting for a certain position. They may have had a low response to adverts, or discovered that all the CVs that have been sent in are from people who are under qualified or inappropriate for the role. This can be very frustrating, particularly as it is very expensive to place recruitment adverts in the local and national press.

Businesses who don’t have a full-time Human Resources function, or who are too busy to handle top recruitment themselves often outsource to an agency. Whilst it has a cost attached, it removes the majority of the recruitment burden from the company’s internal resources and makes sure that the best candidates are put forward for the job. This use of external expertise is really no different from using a design agency to run a website, or a sanitary company to do the cleaning, and leaves the company’s management free to approach the interview stage fresh and enthusiastic.

Executive recruitment is normally for specialised roles and candidates therefore need to have a very well-defined set of skills and experience. For this reason, businesses are often less concerned with the time taken to employ someone than they are with the quality of the person they eventually hire. This can turn the search and selection process into a long one and managers can go through several sets of candidates before offering the position.

Specialist recruitment agencies come into their own here. Their databases help to search out possible candidates who have the right combination of qualifications, experience and skills, and can even undertake the first round of interviews on the company’s behalf, so that the final list includes only the best candidates available. This outsourcing of basic recruitment functions allows the company to concentrate on running the business and leaves them feeling confident that the candidates that come for interview are all suitable for the job.

Providing your staff with a diverse range of opportunities to represent the company is a great way of collecting information and rewarding performance in the workplace at the same time.

Training

Managers sometimes look on training as a necessary evil. They must release their staff on an irregular basis to improve their skills, possibly selecting the poorer performers first to ensure that the average performance in the department rises. The flaw in this thinking is that training should not be seen as a punishment for poor performance; it ought to be a reward.

Training courses, especially those conducted off-site, can be viewed as a motivational tool. They are an opportunity to learn, to compare experiences, to network and to gather information about life in other businesses. They also allow your people to stand back from their jobs and think more clearly about how best to do their jobs.

Exhibitions

Trade exhibitions are often believed to be the province of the sales and marketing team or the technical people. However you should consider how exhibitions can help with day-to-day motivation for any of your people. Having permission to spend a day out of the year attending an exhibition can only be a positive experience. This exposes your people to the wider industry that they work within and can give them inspiration about making their job even more effective.

You may even have your own stand at a trade exhibition. Normally you would staff the stand with your sales and technical people plus, perhaps, a couple of administrators. As a reward for a particularly good piece of work, you could assign junior or non-technical people to the stand that would not normally be chosen for this duty.

Conferences

Every year your competitors and sister companies will be tempted to attend a variety of conferences. Some of these are essential viewing as they concern government regulations in your industry; others are nice-to-do, dealing with industry trends or introducing new technologies. In the same way that we generally send technical specialists to exhibitions, we tend to concentrate on the same group of people to gather information from conferences.

You may or may not know that this is viewed as favoritism by many of your people who have never seen a conference. They only see the glamour of having a day away from the office and will not be convinced that conferences can be stressful, tedious and boring.

In the same way that exhibitions expose your employees to personalities in the industry, conferences achieve this too. They also provide your people with a point of view about some of the competitive issues with which your business is grappling. It is not unusual for these seemingly junior people to see solutions that you or your normal conference attendees may miss.

The first step in choosing the right software is probably the most important, yet all it requires is that you to ask yourself a simple question; what do I want to achieve by using a timesheet system?  It may be to improve quoting or budgeting, tracking project progress, tracking attendance and automating payroll, or to assist with client billing.  Most of the better-known timesheet packages tend to focus on one or two of these functions and do them well, but may be deficient in other areas.  When looking for the right timesheet package, select your package based on the core function it is designed for.  Determine which features are critical and which are less important.  A package that is designed to be good for automating payroll may not collect enough information for it to be useful for client billing.  A timesheet system that is designed for client billing may not have the project management functions you require.  The more specific your requirements are, the easier it is find the appropriate software application.  Thus, if you require a timesheet system that tracks computer-based work, is simple to use, yet can perform many other functions, you can narrow your product search down to just one product called Spherical Timesheet.  Write a list of your requirements in order of importance, and keep this list handy while you’re doing the product search.

When considering your requirements, also keep in mind what your think your future needs will be.  As an example, if you currently have a number of staff and your organization continues to grow, the software you select should be scalable to cope for the anticipated growth.  However, you need to be realistic with your needs as one could say that anything is possible in the future.  You don’t want to choose a product that can do nearly anything just because there is a chance you might need it one day.  As a general rule, the more powerful the software, the more complex it will be to use, administer and support.

A decision you must make is whether you would like to go for a web-based solution or a desktop application.  A web based timesheet system generally interacts with all users via a standard web browser.  This type of timesheet system can be useful if you don’t want to install software on each user’s machine, and it can also be helpful as timesheet entry can normally be performed by any of your staff with an internet connection.  You can also choose a subscription-based timesheet service (often call an ASP, or application service provider), where the provider stores your timesheet data on one of their servers.  These solutions can be inexpensive with a periodical payment and very little up-front investment, but you need to consider the value you put on the confidentiality of your timesheet information and security, as timesheets and financial data may viewed by the provider, and any internet site can be a target for hackers.  Web-based timesheet systems can also be a double-edged sword; they are often easy to operate but too simple in functionality to be very useful.

In comparison to web-based solutions, a desktop-based application is a program that is installed and run on each staff member’s computer.  Desktop applications can be setup within your company’s firewall, preventing users from outside your company from accessing your timesheets. They also give the timesheet software developers a lot more freedom in terms of creating software interfaces and reporting engines, and as a result may be more sophisticated and powerful.  If you have staff that work remotely and require access to your timesheet system, you should ensure that the timesheet software you choose provides the option for remote access (these systems commonly allow timesheets to be sent by email).

Once you have determined the base functionality you require and the type of timesheet system that is suitable for you, it’s time to start looking for the right product.  A quick internet search for timesheet software is a good place to start.  If you are also looking for support and possibly installation services, you may wish to consider adding you country or city to the search term.  There are a lot of different timesheet packages out there, so you may wish to try a two-stage approach.  Firstly, find a company you think may have a suitable product and service, print out some information such as a product brochure, and then move on to look at another company’s offering.  This way you can quickly create a shortlist of possible candidates before getting too far into the more time-consuming task of evaluating each product and determining which best suits your needs.

With your short-list of timesheet products, examine the intricacies of each against your criteria of needs.  Prioritize those needs.  Download a trial of the software and at the very least try out all of the features that are high on your requirements list.  If a vendor does not offer a means to try the software before you purchase it, ask questions as to why this may be the case.  Is it too hard to install and configure?  Is it too hard to use?  I recommend you avoid any system that you can’t evaluate in your own working environment.  A product trial gives you the insurance that the timesheet software product is really going to solve your business need.  One feature to evaluate is the usefulness of the software link between it and third-party applications.  Many vendors provide functionality just so that they can tick the box on their feature list, rather than to provide a genuinely useful data exchange between applications.  If it is critical that your timesheet software can export invoice data into accounting software, than go and try the export procedure before you make your final purchasing decision.  Be satisfied that it can perform all the tasks or at least some of the tasks that you require.

As with any new acquisition, it would not be appropriate to discuss purchasing without examining price and value for money.  Within reason, the most suitable timesheet software for your company is going to be the one that addresses your needs the best, even if it is considerably more expensive then your next best option.  The right timesheet software system will pay for itself very quickly.  Critically consider customer testimonials such as those set out on the product website where clients have provided feedback on the cost effectiveness of the product.  Clearly, where there are efficiency gains to be made and correspondingly fast return on investment, the purchase price becomes of less significance.  If correctly chosen, the timesheet software you choose should pay for itself very quickly.

Finally, consider the timesheet vendor itself.  Do they offer the appropriate level of technical support that you require?  Again consider client testimonials to determine if they have happy clients (keeping in mind they never publish the bad comments!).  Test their customer service by sending the technical support department an email with a few simple questions.  If they’re slow in responding, don’t expect better service once you’ve handed over your money.

Choosing the right timesheet software package for your business does not have to be a daunting task.  By focusing on your business objectives and core requirements, you should find there are plenty of options from which to choose.  Take your time, make the right choice and your business enterprise will enjoy all the benefits of efficiency and accountability that timesheet software can deliver.

Runaway success is never based on incremental improvement. I know this is a very bold statement, but bold statements and even bolder results are what breakthroughs are all about. What about in your company – what would constitute a breakthrough? Would you like to increase overall productivity by 40%? Of course you would! But would you commit to it? What about expanding sales by 50% – in one quarter! Or cultivating a completely new distribution channel – in two months! Sound impossible? Breakthrough results always “seem” impossible at the time you commit to them. If they seemed reasonable, they wouldn’t qualify as breakthroughs.

Breakthroughs share the following characteristics:

1) The results are not predictable based on your past performance. If you routinely increase revenues a handsome 20% per year, a 50% increase would be a breakthrough. Developing a new product or service in 3 months would be a breakthrough if it normally takes you six.

2) You commit to the results, in advance, without knowing how to accomplish them, and without a plan. This is the exact opposite of “let’s study this” syndrome.

3) And finally, they define outcomes which are concrete and measurable, and lead to a new level of performance. By virtue of its accomplishment, a breakthrough will stretch and grow the capabilities of your company.

Critical Success Tip

The “secret” to producing breakthrough results is putting the cart before the horse. Standard organizational decision making says “What do we need, what are we capable of, and how can we use our capabilities to produce what we need?” Breakthrough thinking says “What are we committed to, we believe in the possibility of that commitment, and what can we do next?”

Think for a moment about creating a breakthrough in how you respond to client requests. Instead of “going back and thinking about it”, breakthroughs require you to first commit to your client, then figure it out and take action. This may seem distasteful, even weird – our culture holds strong taboos against making promises we can’t keep. And if you couple this with a common fear of failure…you will resist making bold promises and you will not produce breakthroughs.

Critical Success Tip

Try anything and fail faster! Don’t worry about whether it’s going to work or not. If it seems like it can work, if it might produce the results you want, do it! In fact, the more things you implement, the more unworkable approaches you discover and get out of the way, the quicker you are likely to find a solution which yields the breakthrough. Also, a willingness to implement wild, even crazy, nontraditional approaches can produce results in record time. Remember, we are not talking about problems which need incremental solutions – you already know how to do these. Take the things you do that work, and make them better, or do more of them. But, as the author Rita Mae Brown wrote, “Insanity is when you keep doing the same things expecting different results”. By definition, you don’t know how to produce a breakthrough, so get busy and fail faster.

Bold Promises and Action

There are four steps to creating breakthroughs.

1) Ask yourself the question: “What important “thing” – which I currently think is impossible – would I commit to, right now, if I actually believed it would be possible to accomplish?”

2) Make a bold promise which commits you to the accomplishment of that “thing”. Make sure your promise (your commitment) is specific, measurable, and has a completion date. Also – this is critical – go public with your commitment. Tell concerned people, like your entire organization, your investors, or your customers.

3) Invent ways to deliver on your commitment, and spring into action.

4) Keep going until you’re done…a major breakthrough is just inches away.

Critical Success Tip

The magic to using the breakthrough technology is this: Make bold promises, publicly. Then, stay in action…do the next thing…find out if it worked…then do the next thing…find out if that worked, and so on. These steps are all driven by that crazy, breakthrough commitment you made.

Consistency is very important in the business world today, unless you want to loose your business before it even gets off the ground, you can’t say one thing then completely do another. In order to ensure consistency in communication, you may need to ask for help from someone who know what their doing when it comes to corporate identity management. There are many good organizations that can help you do just that. They can take your company and create something that will be distributed all over, no matter what you’re selling. Another important aspect is that your staff needs to be able to identity with your company’s corporate identity so they feel comfortable with it. From your company’s reception area, to telephone manners, the design of all printed materials and Web sites, to public relations, every aspect of a business has to breathe its Corporate Identity to be believable and distinguishable. Only then will your business have the chance of being taken seriously in the market, and ultimately to succeed. The primary idea behind a corporate identity program is everything your business does, own, and service it provides, should project a clear idea of what you and your business goals are. A good corporate identity management system works well and keeps the important things on tract.

A colleague of mine was responsible for running a bi-weekly two-hour team meeting. He took great care to develop a very full, detailed agenda. As we would get into the meeting, it would only take us getting to agenda item one before the meeting was behind schedule. During the entire time that my colleague ran these meetings, we never got more than halfway through the agenda before adjourning. The team got so used to not making it through the agenda that there wasn’t even an attempt to try to stay on schedule. The agenda and associated times were completely unrealistic and were worthless as a meeting management tool.

An effective agenda goes beyond start time, location, topics, and durations. Effective agendas do the following:

* Support the meeting purpose

* Set the expectations of attendees as to what will be discussed

* Inform attendees of any preparation that will be required prior to the meeting

* Give the meeting leader a roadmap for driving the agenda

* Permit adequate time to cover each item

* Allow the meeting leader to adjust the agenda easily if the meeting gets behind schedule

Having said all this, there is a guiding principle the meeting owner needs to follow: The meeting owner drives the agenda, not the other way around. There are times where you may have a concise meeting purpose and specific agenda items to address the meeting purpose, but the actual meeting deviates from the agenda. Be open to the agenda change; just make sure the meeting purpose is still being met. Doing this requires the meeting owner be very in-tune to what is going on in the meeting and footing it back to what is happening on the agenda. If the actual meeting is deviating from the agenda, the meeting owner needs to consciously decide if the deviation is appropriate or if it needs to be nipped in the bud. There’s no secret sauce on this; it means keeping the original meeting’s purpose in mind, observing what is actually happening in the meeting, and continually assessing whether the meeting’s purpose is being met.

So, what are some good tips to developing effective agenda? Consider these next time you have to plan a meeting:

* Have a tight, focused meeting purpose – You’ve called the meeting for a reason; make sure that the purpose is explicit and achievable. A good sanity check on this is that you should be able to complete this sentence: “At the end of this meeting we should be able to _______.”

* Cross-foot your agenda items with the meeting purpose – As you’re crafting your agenda items, make sure that each item is doing something to support the meeting purpose. If the items don’t support the meeting purpose either change the agenda item or change the purpose. Don’t confuse the attendees by having agenda items that don’t support the meeting purpose

* Be realistic with allocated agenda item times – Don’t put overly aggressive times on the agenda that you in your heart know you’re not going to achieve. Planning 90 minutes worth of meeting in 60 minutes means you’ll only get through 2/3 of the meeting or the meeting will run over by at least 30 minutes. Don’t wish for best case; put reality down.

* Distribute the agenda at least one day before the meeting – Meeting attendees want to know what is going to be discussed and if there is preparation that is needed prior to the meeting. Give them a day if possible to review the agenda and get mentally prepared for the meeting.

* Put the most important agenda items at the front of the meeting – Cover your top items first. There are two reasons for this: first, you’ll ensure that the most important items get covered. Second, you’ll keep attendee attention better by covering the most important items earlier. If they are put later in the agenda then you’ll see some chomping at the bit as you go through lesser important agenda items first.

* Have as your last agenda item an “action items review” section – I’ve seen way too many meetings happen in my career where the end of the meeting comes, everyone leaves, but there is no agreement on what actions need to be taken out of the meeting. In your action items review, indicate what the action items are, who is responsible for each action item, and when the action item needs to be completed by.

* Have a contingency plan in place for when agenda items run over – Even with the best-planned meetings, sometimes agenda items take longer than expected. Have a plan for how you are going to accommodate the change, which could mean shortening some other agenda items or eliminating an agenda item completely

Build tight, realistic, achievable agendas. You’ll get more done, reduce attendee frustration, and make the best use of everyone’s time. Just don’t be a slave to the agenda if you see the agenda won’t accomplish the meeting’s purpose.

The task of recordkeeping is usually procrastinated until the very last minute, when it is required. It is time to file your tax return, or time to go to the bank to get a loan for the business and the banker wants to see some financial records for the business. This can be a very daunting and cumbersome task if you have to dig through receipts and expenses for the whole year! No wonder we hate keeping records. That’s no fun!

Well, guess what? If you aren’t keeping good, timely, and up-to-date records monthly, you don’t need to be in business. That’s right. I said it. Here are the top five reasons why I truly believe this statement.

1. Lost tax deductions = Lost Money If you are throwing your receipts in a shoebox each month and not keeping an organized record of your income and expenses, I can bet you money that you are losing out on some major tax deductions. A smart businessperson keeps track of her income (cash in) and expenses (cash out) monthly, sometimes even weekly. You do not need a fancy accounting software package to do this. You don’t even need a computer! Simply keep a journal monthly and log in all of your receipts and invoices, and there you have it.

2. High CPA/Tax Preparer Fees = Lost Money I can speak from personal experience, that if you bring in that shoebox of receipts for the year and expect your tax preparer to record and properly deduct your business expenses on your tax return, you are sadly mistaken. Tax season is the busiest time of year for these professionals. If you expect them to do your bookkeeping and recordkeeping as well, expect to pay for it. They don’t have the time, or the desire to make sure that every receipt is accounted for. As a businessperson, it is your responsibility to make sure they are given the right totals and you can trace it right back to your tax return.

3. Too much time spent looking for receipts The time you spend looking for a past receipt for a particular purchase for whatever reason, you can be utilizing this time in advertising your business or producing your product. These are important money generating activities that you are sacrificing due to your lack of recordkeeping.

4. No financial statements Every business owner should review at least the profit and loss statement (income statement) for their business MONTHLY. This important piece of paper tells you if you are making money or losing money. How can you possibly run your business and make a profit if you are not analyzing your sales and expenses continuously? A good recordkeeping system will allow you to have this information at your fingertips.

5. No need for expensive accounting software If you are just starting your business, or are a small business owner, you more than likely do not need software to prepare your books. A simple journal that is kept monthly of your income and expenses is all you need. At a glance, you will know how your business performed for that particular month.

As a business owner, you need to realize the importance of a good recordkeeping system. This should also be a task that the business owner performs for at least three to six months before delegating the job to someone else. You will be able to run your business more effectively, determine possible cycles in the business year, and know where your money is going. Your business will be much more successful if you keep a simple recordkeeping system.

Last month I talked about keeping your quality improvement changes in place—using a manual that you develop of SOP’s, standard operating procedures. By the way, if you missed that issue, you can find it on my website, and several earlier ones too.

This month I want to address starting a quality improvement project. That is, how do you decide what project to work on? What issue or process is causing the most waste, is doing the most harm, is most affecting the bottom line? Maybe you are a leader at your site and you have an idea of what is generally causing problems. For instance, you may think that patients with catheters are getting a lot of infections. Perhaps, checking patients in at your site is taking too long and creating a bottleneck. Maybe patients are complaining about having to wait too long at check in at a doctor’s office. It could be that certain departments are running short of supplies too often. There are many other possibilities. The probability is that unless you are directly involved in the contentious process, you probably are not aware of what the exact problems are and are not aware of possible solutions.

This leads us to the conclusion that in order to discover the many problems facing every organization, especially in terms of wasted effort, time and money, there has to be in place a mechanism for the problems to surface to the leaders from the front lines of the organization. There has to be a way for the leaders to hear about the problems from those who are directly involved. For instance, does anyone in your organization know what ideas the cleaning staff has for making the organization better? When I say that there has to be a way for the ideas to surface, I don’t mean that the only ones with a voice should be nursing staff and other professionals. Rather, as in the Baldrige Improvement Plans, the entire staff is involved in quality improvement.

I know of a few hospitals where the leadership—president, CFO, COO, etc.—go out several mornings every week to talk to staff at all levels and patients to see how things could be better and to get some positive feedback about what things are going well. Perhaps at your site you want to start something like this. As time goes by and as suggestions are implemented, staff will feel safer about making suggestions.

Leadership needs to make sure that staff feel safe about making suggestions, no matter what the method of suggesting changes is used. Perhaps you might want to use an anonymous survey for collecting initial suggestions. After some of the suggestions are acted upon, the staff will feel like the leaders really want good ideas and will feel safer making them known. Perhaps you might want to use a consultant in Lean Healthcare (many of these ideas I suggest come directly from Lean Healthcare) to teach the staff the principles and processes of Lean Healthcare and other tools as may seem fit. This approach will help a large organization start making many positive changes quickly, rather than using the idea of slowly spreading the means of change throughout an organization, as some prefer.

Whatever your initial process of getting the ideas percolating up in the organization, after some ideas for quality improvement recommended by the rank and file are successfully implemented and after the improvements and savings are made known in the organization, it is time to create ways to get more ideas. Perhaps you want to have regular meetings with a designated leader and representatives from several staffing areas that will bring up ideas. That means that the rest of the staff must feel comfortable about making suggestions to these team members. If your site has few employees, then perhaps it would be best to have regular staff meetings with all employees where the agenda always includes time for quality improvement ideas and for updates on ongoing projects. Whatever method you decide works best for your site, be sure that an atmosphere safety and security exists for all the staff. This may mean going so far as to guarantee that no staff will lose there position as improvements create more time to get things done.

So, once you have a steady flow of quality improvement ideas being generated by all in the organization, which ones should you act upon? Next month, I’ll address that issue. This issue I decided to concentrate on the Define step of Six Sigma’s DMAIC (define, measure, act, improve, control). Next, I will discuss the measure segment. Sometime in the future I’ll cover team dynamics too