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This business health check video we're going to cover some of the things we haven't covered so far, and just cap it all off with a little bit of advice around things not to miss as you go through the process. So, to the things that we haven't covered so far. Things like baselines.
You should be able to get some sort of performance based on either, whether that's productivity metric, a some sort of performance metric efficiency, whatever it may be getting down to, you've got to go back into that area to make some improvements. You've got baselines.
What will they use to in any diagnostic activity, as one can do this up front before you go into the area. It will be quite useful to look at activity sampling. Now this involves quite simple template. And if any of you want to copy activities, been template see mailman, I'll ping on over to you. And it's just a small observation of a work area, or team or operation that you see, we've seen for an hour and every five minutes, You look what the people are doing. And you might do that, two, three times at different times of the day, but it gives you a very insightful picture of where the value and non value added activities are being carried out within the area. Really simple, quite crude is pretty accurate enough
to give you some insight into what happened in operation.
So, we carried out this diagnostic, just listen over some of the myths that could get thrown your way as well. So for example, yeah we, we can improve quality and reduce costs, because that's impossible.
You know, if you do one, you can't do the other.
So, we all know that it's possible, because we do it every day.
Service delivery is all about doing lots of extra things, because money is about doing what the customer wants when the customer wants it costs. The quality that we want and it will keep delighting in the way we deliver that to them, but it's not very genius. That's waste.
Our world is too complicated, this lens of Lean Six Sigma operational excellence won’t work for us, it will work for your people you've got processes, it works. Period.
Volumes don't vary or volumes are too predictable.
Doesn't matter. Prove that we have a very tight quality coaching team.
In some cases it may be we have an award winning team that raise alarm bells.
Don't believe what you're told
You should also learn to spot, things like role creep within a project projects that have been going on, or any contracts or agreements you have with customers, so you might find that the contract says one thing, the operation is actually doing much more than that, not charging for it. variety confusion and complexity, quality, quality systems. So checking checking the checking checking the checker.
Lack of internal integration, open downstream in any processes, again, that can be an issue with lots of handoffs, so the handoffs quite often, the errors come in two things.
Any cottage industries within operations within processes should always look out for, sort of sacred cows. Any holy grail solutions, and the elephant in the room.
In summary, when you're doing any kind of business diagnostic preparation, communication is absolutely Key, doing a big big business diagnostic is about using your eyes, your ears and your brain, and all the rest of your senses. Don't get lost in checklists or health checks.
You're looking in you're observing and you're understanding what's going on in operation.
It takes some practice. First time you might miss stuff you do it enough to do these things for 20 years. You learn to spot the signs, and pick things up.
That comes with experience or practice practice practice them to help give me a call.
Those solutions solution is.
So, don't walk in somewhere and immediately think you know the answer.
you will usually be wrong, get the data, understand the area first observe the process and the management of the area to observe the managers in their natural habitat, if you watch what they do, watch how they do the World Watch me speak to the people as well.
Listen to what we're telling you and then ask them to show you data to back that up.
Think about the individual businesses everyone's unique, every business is different, so there will be different issues in every business. So, the worst thing you can do is walk around with this place, because it is unique.
So, the window that open mind, keep yourself open to this stuff. So ask yourself, what is this area all about. Is it meeting the customer needs. Is it performing the basic value adding tasks effectively.
And don't forget the basic, the fundamental question, should we be doing these activities at all?
And then when you've done those things.
Go away. Catch your outputs. Right is scribble notes get lots and lots of notes, and then you're done like you're in a position then to create the output, so you can capture the thoughts issues that you've seen from that record and it can be done, and then you can formulate recommendations going forward, put a plan together, get out and do it.
and make those improvements. Thanks, hope it's been useful. As I said, anyone's got any questions, feel free to email me or give me a call. Thanks for your time. I've been Paul swift.