Questions vs. Answers

“You can tell if a man is clever by his answers, you can tell if a man is wise by his questions.” 

- Naguib Mafouz, 1988 winner of the Nobel prize for literature.

How companies often waste time and money

As a consultant, I find these three areas as the biggest cause of business waste:

1. Meetings - Inevitably, meetings in organizations become inefficient, dragging on affairs.  Why?

     

     a. Managers focus on inputs (bureaucracy) vs. outputs (customer value).  They equate meetings with accomplishment.

     b. Over-scheduled Managers send subordinates who can't make decisions.

     c. Risk adverse employees continually rehash discussions rather than commit to taking action.

  

2. Documentation - While documenting procedures are important, companies fail in this area because:

     a. Over-documenting—even trivial procedures are formally documented.

     b. Over-complicated formats—resulting in the actual task being easier than its documentation.  This causes project delays.

     c. Documents tend to be officially stored on overcrowded servers, making it difficult for employees to retrieve.

3. Failure Work - Work is not done right the first time and needs to be redone because:

     a. The outcome and/or process wasn't originally communicated properly.

     b. The proper resources (people, time, budget) weren't originally sufficiently allocated.

     c. Subordinates did not understand, but were afraid to ask questions.

My February 2018 "Chicago Business Journal" Column

I wrote this month's column on Grubhub's deal with Taco Bell and KFC is evidence of two new trends in restaurant technology.

Inducted into the Million Dollar Consultant® Hall of Fame

Last week, I received one of the biggest honors in the field of consulting. I was one of several outstanding global consultants from diverse disciplines who was inducted into the Million Dollar Consultant® Hall of Fame on February 15 at a ceremony at The Bernardus Inn, Carmel, California conducted by Alan Weiss, PhD, the globally-acclaimed “consultant’s consultant.” Criteria for membership in this elite group include: • Serving as an exemplar to others in the profession. • Manifesting the highest levels of integrity, ethics, and accountability. • Contributing intellectual capital to the consulting profession. • Engaging in continuing, challenging, personal and professional development.

Best Practices for Businesses to Create Standard Operating Procedures (SOPS)

As a business consultant and specialist in simplicity/productivity, I've worked with many fast-growing clients to create SOPs.

1. Why SOPs:

    If operations and knowledge aren't written down, then they will live in the heads of a few, key employees.  This results in those employees being overworked while other employees are underutilized due to lack of knowledge.

2. Priorities:

    SOPs should first be used to create those processes which are used 80% of the time during the workday.  After that, the less common (usually more complex) tasks can be written down as they occur.

3. How To Get Started:

   Have the person who is currently knowledgable of the task write down the steps as they are actually performing the task.  This way, they are less likely to leave out any steps.  Then, the next time the same task needs to be done, a new person should do the task while following the SOP, with the expert observing.  This will help them streamline the process and discover any missing steps.

4. Important:

  One important thing about SOPs, that I have learned from some of my clients, is that the SOP should be written simply, and be easily accessible to all necessary employees.  

I once had a bank as a client who recorded SOPs in a formal, wordy format (with unnecessary details) and stored it on a crowded internal network.  People didn't use it because it was much easier to ask people informally than to locate and read through the entire document.

When You Get Pushback Against Innovation From Within The Organization...

Serving as an innovation consultant for a recent large client, I met a lot of resistance.   The product/sales side was very interested in innovative new products/services that they could offer their customers, to be more competitive within their industry. The IT division, on the other hand, put up a lot of resistance. They prided themselves on stability, and were afraid of making changes to the system. They also wanted to focus their resources on upgrading existing systems. On the other hand, they also considered themselves to be the "innovation leaders" of the company, and didn't want outside consultants or groups talking or promoting innovation. We finally reduced their resistance by reminding them that they are critical partners, and would always have an important role in innovation. We also told them that they need to see themselves as "facilitators of innovation", rather than having to innovate themselves. They should think of themselves as an "internal cloud services" start-up that enables the rest of the company to create solutions for their customers.

2018 Technology Trends

As a business/technology consultant, I'm seeing these 3 trends among my clients:

1. More portable workspaces, where units within companies use their own cloud-based tools, rather than what IT provides them.  IT simply provides a secure interface for them to access company systems/data.

2. More adoption of AR (augmented reality) through glasses and phone apps, to allow employees to work in hybrid physical/digital spaces.

3. More exploration of using blockchain technology to track financial transactions and to track products through the supply chain.  This will especially be used more for tracing food recalls back to their sources and for proving eco-friendly and ethical sourcing.