Blog – Excellence Associates

Do you treat Excellence as a joke?

continuous improvement, Development, excellence, Lean Six Sigma

All the great organisations are aware that being excellent really counts if they are to be successful over a prolonged period. To gain the best results, the commitment to being excellent must come from the very top of the organisation. Leadership is a multi-faceted role, and it can have a positive effect when the drive is to be really good at all things.

Doing the very small things well within specific areas of a business will lead to the larger operation showing enhanced results, and the embedding of a culture of excellence and continuous improvement enables all people to gain exposure to the way in which things can always be done better. It is of little consequence that examining a process does not always find improvement; the danger of not regularly reviewing procedures is that a bad one will be left to drain value from an area, and will fester and possibly infect related parts of the organisation.

Whether your favoured system is Lean, 6Sigma, or another, the only sure way to move forward is to keep excellence at the very heart of what you do. Not everyone likes clowns, but their attitude epitomises the secret to making a good organisation a great one: excellence is fun, but it’s not a joke.

Usership v Ownership – a new dilemma?

Planning

Many current small or medium enterprises, as well as entrepreneurial start-up ventures, will be a pale reflection of their counterparts from several years ago.

Visiting the bank manager and financial institutions with the mandatory Business Plan in hand is perhaps still a requirement for those wanting to borrow funds to establish or grow the business further, but in today’s business environment of speed and quality being the expected baseline of performance, the approach to running an enterprise is vastly different. Why borrow when you don’t have to?

Money is widely available, but the cost of accessing the funding is increasingly challenging for all but the heaviest hitters in the commercial world. This has led over recent times to an adjustment in the models used to carry on a daily operation in a pressured setting, and an alternative view has been taken to the use of available working capital.

The need for a small operator in any sector to have costly owned assets has changed markedly. Close scrutiny of automotive adverts shows a propensity of leasing deals in place of ownership of the vehicle concerned. Make a point of reading the small print next time you see one. Fixed phone systems are reducing for small contractors and service providers – particularly in the construction industry. All business can be done from a smart phone or tablet.

There is even the opportunity to use a global suite of software – with 34 integrated modules – for no cost whatsoever. There is no catch, and the usership base is over 20 million.

If you would like to know more please contact us now.

Usually, it’s what’s beneath the surface that counts

Development, Planning

You get up. You go to work. You arrive in the office. You sit at your desk.

A hundred other suits do the same, in the same office. Are you really all just clones? Perhaps.

The best organisations look beyond the classic business armour of a suit or uniform. They have an image to create, a brand to re-inforce, a reputation to protect, but they need their talent to have a range of skills. Even at the #EURO2016 football championships, each team appeared almost identical in their respective team colours, but the players were able to contribute differently.

This knowledge – that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts – allows great organisations to develop the potential of their people, and utilise the human capital in the best ways possible. As part of this process, the individual can grow and progress through their career with positive results. Developing people is a vital component to a serious business plan, and there are established methods for doing it. These are able to be tailored to specific requirements for each organisation, and you can find out more here. (read more…)