Last week, I attended a small business workshop hosted by the Charlotte Chamber of Commerce. It was a great workshop made even better by the phenomenal consultants that sat at my table. During our conversations, we discussed the concept of many small business owners stating that they are too busy running their business to improve their business and thus having a difficult time taking that leap to the next “hypothetical” level that moves their business forward.
This discussion reminded me of a blog post that I read several months ago on lean.org “To Busy to Improve”.
It also made me think of the saying:
“You can’t fix a broken leg while you are running on it.”
Don’t misunderstand, I am not saying stop running your business, but I am saying “pause” long enough to identify your opportunities for improvement. Ask yourself the following questions about your business operations and then start the journey to continuously improving.
What are the business operations processes that:
Take the longest amount of time
(sales/leads management, document management, etc.)?Require the largest number of resources
(training, inventory management, etc.)?Produce the most customer complaints
(scheduling, invoicing/billing, etc.)?Generate the largest percentage of your costs?
Whether you are a large business or small business, highly profitable or just getting started, there is always opportunity for improvement.
Branner Consulting, LLC’s signature service is performing Business Operations Reviews for small to medium sized businesses. Using thought leadership and industry specific benchmarking, our team evaluates the current state of client’s day to day operations to determine best practices, lessons learned, and opportunities for improvements. We help you identify potential problems and help you solve them!
Branner Consulting, LLC Blog 