Most business people learn that it’s better to target for small gains each week and continue to work in a proactive, positive manner, to ensure those gains are achieved and that they’re retained.
The term ‘overnight success’ is normally significantly overrated. People who become ‘business celebrities’ for an invention or a new product they’ve developed have normally worked for years on developing their new technology or product. They’ve been very conscious of the need to achieve small gains each week.
The key for a business is to utilise the entire team as part of the business development process and to encourage all team members to achieve small gains. An important aspect of successfully implementing improvements is to ensure the right types of people are employed in the first instance and that they’re all ‘on the bus, seated in the correct seats’ so that everyone can contribute to the gains within the business. This should ensure everyone in the team is involved in the development of business processes and products and therefore they can all share in the ownership and achievements the business obtains. It’s important that there are open discussions within the organisation relative to what’s important for the business and what the targets are, so there can be meaningful discussions.
Many businesses have found it beneficial to issue a special notebook to all team members and ask them to write down any thoughts or ideas they have during the week and then for the business to have a conversation on a Friday afternoon, to review what the team members have written in their special notebook. The objective is for the team to then take notice of those ideas, to prioritise them and try to implement the ideas that have been suggested. If the idea has potential, the priority should be to introduce that idea and to measure its performance, to determine whether that new process or product should become part of the firm’s overall culture.
However, the important item to remember is that, if the idea, product or process doesn’t work, it needs to be terminated at the earliest opportunity. The key strategy the business should be encouraging is for the team members to think about ways to improve the business operations, to write them down, to bring them to a meeting and to discuss them, where the meeting will decide whether to trial the idea and measure whether it’s successful or not. It doesn’t matter if it’s a failure, it’s better to have tried than not to have tried at all. Obviously, not every idea will be a raging success.
The encouragement of new ideas is vital for the long-term success of the business. Management should be encouraging team members to think of ideas, encourage them to develop the ideas and then let them have a go at trying to implement them within a budgeted framework. Don’t try to micromanage the process. Let your team members have a go at trying to make the idea work.
To be successful, management needs to encourage the taking of calculated risks if new products, processes or services are going to be developed.
In all these processes, one group that should be given continuous thought is the customers. What benefit would the customers have from this proposed new product, process or service? What changes will be made in the business operations? Will the changes improve the services and satisfaction for customers?
Once the processes have started, it’s important that measurements of every aspect of the product, process or service are recorded, so benchmark comparisons can be made with other products, processes or services being developed by the business or other organisations.
This type of approach will assist the business to determine the gaps in the market. What new services, processes or products could be developed to fill the gap? This is where an appreciation will be obtained for the ‘small gains are an important policy of the business’. Normally, these new products, processes or services are not an overnight sensation. There needs to be a continual level of work undertaken to achieve the end results. In most cases, if small gains are being achieved each week and all team members are involved, then the business is well on the way to implementing an outstanding new product, process or service that all the team can share in the joy of a job well done.
