Business Performance Software
Raise Your Standards!

To make radical improvement to performance of your business, you need to stop putting up with your current method of doing things. Below we provide many useful tips to help with this. It also helps to start tracking and monitoring improvement with business performance software.

If we really self evaluate, we find so many things that we do each day could be different and better. But, we get used to doing things in a certain way and this leads to complacency, which counteracts continuous improvement.

One of my biggest bug bears, when helping businesses, I see so many competent people put up with poor ways of working. They formed bad habits because they have got used to working this way. They use wrong tools, the wrong processes, the wrong decisions… the list goes on!

Get Fed Up

The first thing to do is to get fed up. Don’t tolerate getting by any more. Decide that you want to perform at a higher level and instantly raise the standards that you expect.

Use this catchphrase and burn it into your brain... ‘do you think this is acceptable?’ If you see something not right then point it out. You might upset a few people in the short term, but it pays dividends in the longer term.

Draw up a list of things that don't satisfy you. Then use another popular saying – ‘if it looks right it probably is’ to evaluate the list. Look for the things that don’t quite look right. For each item define what good should look like.

Use business performance software such as PDCA Complete to help you evaluate the list.

Desire Change

Wanting to perform at a higher standard forms only one part of the equation. You need to be hungry enough to get through the ensuing conversations.

You will experience friction at times. Many people don’t like change and if you raise business standards then they may feel criticized. You need to re-assure them of your intentions, but also guide them through the process of change. Always provide education when changing how a business works, so make sure you pay special attention to this.

If you don't quite feel ready for a period of change then take some time to reflect on what having a better performing business means to you. Find something important within that change activity and use that as motivation. Many of my clients desire not to work long hours and mop up the business chaos from lax working methods. Does that work for you?

Be Picky

You may feel like shying away from certain conversations because you feel that you're being picky. Be picky. Settling for less than you should, erodes both you and your business.

Instead of being firm about how something should be we accept less. Poor information, meetings starting late, not following processes, not closing out actions, letting maintenance slip by...

You're not being picky, you're raising your standards and letting others know!

Plus, now, our (Quality Assurance Solutions) business performance software for management helps you be picky! PDCA Complete includes the BCS tool which eliminates the the confusion between multiple improvement activities.

Use the CCC tool

A simple method, the CCC tool, helps you wrap up your concerns about standards falling in your business. CCC stands for Concern, Cause and Countermeasure.

It works like this:

1. You list all of your concerns about a particular standard currently missing in your business.
2. For each concern you then establish the (root) cause.
3. For each cause you determine an effective countermeasure, the action you will take to permanently remove the concern.
   

Because of the simplicity and power of this tool, we built it into our PDCA Complete software. CCC quickly and effectively initiate business process improvements. If you've not seen our business performance software, PDCA Complete then please click here to find out more about how it speeds up the identification and management of continuous improvement opportunities.

Convert your opportunities into actions

Once you have a list of improvement opportunities, based on increasing standards within your business, you should compile an action plan so that your business actually changes. PDCA Complete includes a built in function to deal with this. In the software you merely highlight the opportunity from any of the lean and continuous improvement methods and then use the 'Launch' button and you're done.

Make it Visible with Business Performance Software for Management

Once you have an action plan you need to ensure that you keep it visible. When you get embroiled in the busy-ness of the day, you and your team easily loses sight of your improvement actions. Use a shared meeting room, a noticeboard, software, or whatever, but keep your action plan visible. Refer to it often and nibble away at the actions.

If you want some simple to use software to help deploy and make the  improvements visible then check out our business performance software, PDCA Complete. We made it easy to learn and allows you and your team to rapidly generate and manage improvement opportunities currently hiding within your business.

Raising the standards of your business not only generates a very rapid improvement plan, but it helps to drive the right levels of performance that you need within the business.