Recent Blog Posts
The 7 Day Business Improvement Challenge
This past week I took The 7 Day Business Improvement Challenge. I totally made up the challenge last week but you know what. It was a success! So here is the skinny, for 7 days in a row I did at least 1 thing to help my business. It doesn’t matter how much time was spent each day, the point was to do one thing a day to improve the business. Find out what I did to improve Changing Lanes. You won’t be disappointed.
NextDoor.com
I came across a new social website this past week called NextDoor.com. I know what you are thinking, “Oh great another Facebook”. Thankfully this one is different. The site is about connecting with your neighbors so you can be social about neighborhood stuff like garage sales, crime, improving the neighborhood, and more. The concept really caught my eye so I decided to try it out. Here are my first thoughts about this community site.
Spotting the “Me” Complex in the Workplace
Have you ever met a person that only talks about what they have achieved? It was their ideas and their motivation that made the sale, saved the money or made the company a better place. Everything is an over bloated story about themselves; I refer to this behavior as the “me” complex.
Spotting the “Me” complex and how it damages your workplace:
- Overestimating their abilities – You hired someone based on their ability, if that ability is short of what you need, you may have to take extra time to train or rehire.
To Batch or Not to Batch
Batching or grouping like tasks together in Lean processes is discouraged. Why? Because often when we group tasks, we end up not finishing anything. I’ve seen this on more than one occasion in offices where someone started cleaning the supply closet. Everything got taken out but an interruption happened and it was never finished and thrown back helter skelter into the closet. Typically, a project like this would be better done shelf by shelf or drawer by drawer or one flow processing; not batching. To decide if you will be more productive batching or not batching, try it yourself. Now, here is the challenge, identify in your office and life what enhances productivity by batching or not batching.
How do you identify some of the tasks as to Batch or not to Batch? How about invoicing? Or newsletter? Or laundry? Or cooking?
Making Your Customers Work to be Your Customer
A core point of having a business is to make money by providing a service or product. If you can’t make money, I’m guessing you won’t be able to run your business for very long. A problem I’ve been seeing a lot lately on websites is making customers work to be customers. By that I mean making it difficult for a customer to pay or the product/service is difficult to use. It sounds crazy right? But it happens all the time. Maybe you are making it difficult for your customers to be your customers.
Staff Evaluations
Yearly evaluations can be just as nerve racking for you as it is for your staff. Having some kind of order can help ease your staff into expectations while giving them a chance to communicate their concerns. Both parties are looking for ways to make your business run a little smoother while keeping their sanity.
Here is a simple way to plan out your next evaluation;
- Begin with the direction, where you want your staff to be
- Get into detail, if an issue needs to be expressed, now is the time
- End on a positive note, show them you can see the great things they bring to the table
- Never think of an evaluation as a time of criticism but a time of reflection for both parties.
Tolerant People and Zero Tolerance
Being tolerant of differences in humankind is not that same as a “Zero Tolerance” program. Accepting people’s differences is something civil society does– some traits we are just born with and cannot change – like curly hair and brown eyes. The term “Zero Tolerance” in relation to drug abuse programs or cell phone use while driving has become common in many companies.
What happens when a company tolerates a messy office of one employee? What is the aftermath of tolerations? What is your business tolerating right now that can be fixed this week?
My Web Designer Promised But Didn’t Deliver
Your web designer promised you what? Are you kidding? No one can guarantee that! He is charging you how much! Are you serious? Don’t tell me you believe him! In six months you will be saying “My Web Designer Promised But Didn’t Deliver”. It is all too common and most of the time the web designer gets away with it. Continue reading to find out a few pointers on how to avoid being burned by so called web designers.
Why Flexibility Should Be Part of Your Business
Flexibility in the work/life balance with your staff is vital when it comes to harmony in the office. Studies have shown that a happy, healthy and balanced worker is a more productive worker. Not to mention that your favorite worker will be less likely to look elsewhere in the future.
Flexibility for your business can be extra time off, working from home or leaving work a little early to avoid the rush hour traffic.
So how do you offer flexibility within your company and still keep the production high?
It Is Not Just A Phone Any More
What do you do if your cell phone is lost or stolen? You might just write it off and go buy a new one, after all it is just a cell phone. Unfortunately, it isn’t just a cell phone any more as we tend to keep bank info, his credit card info, emails and other personal information. A criminal would have access to all that info and the crime just turned into identity theft.
We tend to forget we get a special price for a phone when we sign up for a two year contract. That $200 phone is actually $550. Which is a hefty price to pay for just a cell phone. But fear not, there are things you can do to protect yourself and get your phone back with a little bit of planning and a single app.