Taking your work outside- Great method to improve productivity and company moral

Now that summer is here, it is time to embrace the weather change and use it to you and your
company’s advantage. No one wants to be stuck in an office all day when they could be outside enjoying
the warm heat and sun! I personally work outside almost every day I can because it helps me think of
new ideas and become more productive. There are many situations and times when you can move your
work outside as well. You will be surprised at how much your employees will enjoy it and what good
things may come from it. Here are just a few ways to be able to take advantage of the summer.

Add some BBQ fun to the workplace- How about a company BBQ! Nothing says summer more
than a BBQ with hamburgers and hotdogs! This is a fairly cheap way to be able to add a little extra to
your company. You can hire a catering company to come and cook for you, or simply bring your BBQ
from home and do it yourself. Sometimes having your own employees participate and cook can help add
to the experience. Make sure it is fun for them. Add a radio to the area so that they stay and eat with
everyone. Since this would be done during scheduled breaks this should not affect productivity at all,
and it will give them something to talk about for a while.

Take the board meeting outside- Why not have the meetings in a place outside of the
workplace? Studies have been done that show when people meet in a more relaxed and welcoming
environment, ideas and participation increase. If your company has a quiet place outside then move the
meeting there. If the meeting requires PowerPoint’s or materials you can print them out, or if your
employees have laptops, have them bring them out as well to be able to have everything they need.

Add some outdoor activities to your day- Create some fun activities to introduce to your
workplace. It is easy to tie company messages or training to the activities making it a fun place for
employees as well as an opportunity to add a business aspect as well. Create training or fun around
things like company car washes where management washes the employee’s cars. There are so many
other options such as dunk tanks, cake walks, or any other game you can think of that you can do at
work. It is easy to tie training material or contests to it. For example with the dunk tank, have a
competition where your employees think of new ways to increase business. The top ideas get free
tickets to throw at the dunk tank.

Creating a company sports team- Every big city has leagues where you can sign teams up to
play against others. Why not create a company team to join one of these leagues! By creating a sports
team you are not only getting employees more involved with the company, but you are also getting
them to work together and get to know each other more which will increase teamwork and
communication. There are many sports that require no real past experience or expensive equipment.

Create an outside marketing campaign- Maybe your business has a product that you can sell or
promote easily outside. The weather drives people out to do outdoor activities. Some of these people
may be potential customers for your company. Build a marketing campaign to get your company out
there with the general public. For example, if you own a clothing line you can create a portable booth to
take to popular outdoor hangouts and sell/advertise your product. There are many things you can do to
find sales opportunities outside which can also get your employees involved in.

The ideas and possibilities are endless as to what you could really do. These sorts of activities
may help end that dry spell of no new ideas or help give you the next great company plan! It is up to you
as an owner to encourage people to participate in activities that may help your business be more fun
and grow. If you are not good with ideas, why not create a committee within your company to come up
with the ideas for you. You can also hiring consulting companies that offer these services to help you
find out what sort of activities are right for you.

The Principals of Six Sigma Methodology and how it can help your Business- Creating Change Agents

           There are many different aspects in build into an employee and leader. You need to teach them the basic knowledge of their job, the company and industry they work in, and the skills to succeed in the company. One issue I find with businesses is that they train and build education for their employees on the position they are currently in, not the position they want to be in! One aspect of this is creating what we call in Six Sigma a change agent. A change agent is someone who learns skills to advance in a company. These people truly believe in the company they work for and want to help the business succeed in any position they are in. Creating a change agent environment can dramatically improve production, lower turnover, and increase company moral. 

                Change agent versus a victim. Have you ever had an employee who always blames someone or something else? It is never the employees fault they were late, it was the traffic. It was not their fault the report was late, the printer did not work. It was not their fault the presentation was not complete, it was other team members. Sound familiar! We refer to these people as victims. These people will not take responsibility for their mistakes or errors and instead find a way to blame anything else. By not accepting responsibility, they do not grow as a person or employee! The first thing to create a better environment is to get rid of the attitude of having victims. 

                Going back to the same examples above, a change agent approaches mistakes as opportunities as opposed to pointing blame. They were late because they did not leave early enough. The report was late because they waited until last minute to try and print it. The presentation was not complete because they did not contact other members to check status and identify delays. You have the same results in that a mistake was made. The difference in these situations is that the change agent can now take this experience and learn from it to avoid it from happening in the future. They now know that traffic may cause a ten minute delay, so they should leave a little sooner. They should organize their time to make sure they get their report done sooner so if an issue comes up with the printer they have time to find an alternative solution. To prevent the presentation from being late they will now set reminders to check in with team members at the end of the day to see how things are going.

                Creating an environment like this is not easy. It is much easier for someone to point blame then take responsibility for mistakes.  The first step in this is to create a change agent culture. It is important to know the cultures attitude should be non-blaming and non-judgmental.  If an employee makes a mistake, it should be seen as an opportunity to teach everyone about it, but do it in a positive approach. Doing not criticize or make it seem like more of an issue then it is. It is important to teach employees that mistakes are made and to make sure they see mistakes as opportunities to learn and grow. In life, as well as business, 10% is what happens to us, 90% is how we react to it. Having a negative or blaming attitude causes a negative workplace. A Positive reaction or attitude creates a positive and growing environment.

It is also important that every level of the company can make mistakes. If management makes a mistake, it is important to tell employees and not hide it. Hiding it will just lower overall trust and faith of the management team. Once employees do not trust or believe in their management, it creates a negative environment and limits growth and the ability to manage employees. Think of it this way, if your boss does something wrong and hides it instead of admitting it, will you still trust their judgment on issues? Or even worse, if your boss blames the issue on his team (you) for something that he mismanaged, you may lose all faith in them after that. Another important point is to make sure the employee feels they are part of the company. Let them know their concerns and ideas are important to hear by management. You never know what sort of ideas are out there that may actually help the company!

So how does a company start to develop this culture? Growing this culture and philosophy is a complex mixture of balance and support. Create groups that focus on this within your company. Have employees create a committee that focuses on new ways to increase positivity. Generate newsletters, town halls, team meetings, and memos focused on this concept. Teams must support each member by sharing responsibility and for teams to succeed; members must have an environment to grow. You can apply these skills by creating fun and new ways to interact with your employees. It is important to find ways so that if an employee does a good job they are recognized by management and peers. Employee of the month, recognition emails, and rewards for change are just a few ways to promote this. Encourage employees to give recognition when it is due. A “pay it forward” approach is a great way to spread the attitude. Have employees send recognition emails when they feel it is necessary. The employee receives it and gets a feeling of accomplishment and think of a few people that they can send cards to. This is a great way to increase employee satisfaction and reward employees for their good work. Sometimes all it takes is a thank you to feel valuable to a company. One of the most powerful things I know in existence is a kind word and a thoughtful gesture.

Mistakes will be mad. When they are, coaching needs to be done to the employee that creates the issue. It is important to do a pro active approach. Instead of “attacking” them and pointing blame, do a five W approach. Why did this happen? Why did you do it that way? Why did you not ask for help? Why do you think this happened? The questions should vary issue to issue and be formed as the meeting occurs. 

Example:

Question 1- Why did you miss the deadline?

Answer- I forgot it was due today.

Question 2- Why did you forget the deadline date?

Answer- I forgot to put it on my calendar.

Question 3- What do you think would have prevented this issue from happening?

Answer- Setting a reminder and putting it on my calendar.

Question 4- What do you think happened by you missing the deadline and how did it effect the company?

Answer- Since I missed the deadline we missed a deadline for a client lowering the overall customer satisfaction.

Question 5- What will you do differently next time?

Answer- I will make sure that I put items on my calendar as I receive them to prevent any issue in me forgetting.

This simple meeting helps identify the issue, the impact, and the resolution without pointing direct blame. It is important that the setting is not tense or uncomfortable. The employee should know they did something wrong, but be relaxed and not worry that serious consequences may occur (unless it warrants that). It is important to also train management in re-directing the conversation if it starts to go down the “victim lane”. If the employee starts to point blame at anyone or anything, the manager needs to re-direct it back.

Once you get people to accept the change agent attitude, you will see it snowball. The feeling of accomplishment and making a change to a company is contagious and can permanently change the attitude of employees.  By doing this it can help grow and improve a company 1/10^th of a company every day everyday during the 250 work days per year that is 25% improvement per year with a simple philosophy change. This is much better than trying to set up a campaign to get improved results in a one shot initiative in a month to get 10% improvement. Generally these campaigns are short term and require a lot of time and energy.  This reminds me of two phrases I have heard. One being:  “how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time”.  This understanding is that no matter how big the problem, do not try to take it all on at once. Go at it slowly. The other: “What is the difference between poop and fertilizer? They are essentially the same thing but poop is just a form of waste. Fertilizer is the basic component to grow a large, beautiful environment.”

5 Factors when determining your companies demographic

                This is a common question: “why narrow your marketing to a select group of people?” The answer is both simple and complicated. Simple first, because only certain people want your product! Ok, and now the more complex. Marketing costs money! Even free advertising is not free! Think about it, you are taking time out of your valuable day to do some free marketing online. That is time you could be doing something that can make you money. Once you know how much your advertisement really is costing you, the next thing you want to know is what you are getting back from your marketing. This is considered your return on investment (ROI). If you send out 5,000 fliers but only had 5 customers from those, which is not a good marketing campaign. So what can you do to get more customers by sending out the same amount of fliers? Determine a better demographic to advertise to! Here are five things to really think about when narrowing a demographic:

Age- What age group does your product fall into? Is it a product that is meant more for elderly people, or a younger group? Think about this, your company has a product to help reduce wrinkles. What would be a good group to target? You can narrow this slowly by removing the obvious choices first. We can remove newborn to 18. Kids do not need wrinkle medicine. We can cut the high age as well so let’s remove 55+. If you research this industry you will notice a large drop in consumers at the higher ages as well, why? After a certain age people begin to care less about their appearance when it becomes the norm for their age group and accept it. So based on this, you can see we are at 18-55. Rule of thumb is to narrow to 5% population. We will get to this more later.

Sex- Is your product aimed for a certain sex? Can it only be used by men or women? Going back to the wrinkle cream, most men do not use cosmetic products. So this is a simple one. We would only gear it towards female! Most products have a favor towards one sex or the other. Many unisex products fail because by catering both males and females, it generally becomes a product no one wants! 

Ethnicity- Is your product used more by a certain ethnicity? Will your product offend any specific ethnicity? I first want to say you should never have a product that purposely segregates or offends ANYONE. Not only is it something that will bring bad publicity, but it is just morally wrong. This is not always a big factor to look into, but it can be used in some products. Let’s once again look at our wrinkle cream example. This is a factor we would not really put much importance on. This product is used by all ethnic groups so you would want to market to them all.  

Religion- Is your product geared towards a specific religion or has any aspects of religion involved in it? This is again one that is not always a factor that needs to be used, and again this is one where you should never have a product that is meant to offend or segregate a religion. With our example of wrinkle cream we would probably not use this factor as people of all religions can use it. This factor is sometimes hard to understand when we would use it so here are a couple examples. Is your product spiritual in the fact that it involves doing certain rituals that is not looked at positively by some religions? Meditation products, alternative medicine, jewelry with certain religious emblems are all things that you may be able to narrow it down to a certain group. If you can narrow this section down you can look into advertising in venues with religious groups such as church functions, faith based websites, or networking with religious groups.   

Location- Is your product meant in certain regions? Are you marketing locally only or nationally? Location is very important for so many reasons. You do not want to sell things that cannot be used in certain areas. You would not market surfboards in Arizona! You also wouldn’t market snow shovels in San Diego! You also want to look at other aspects in location as well. Let’s continue with wrinkle cream. Say your product is at the higher end of the price range. It is also cosmetic and not a necessity. These two points play a big factor in where you want to market it. You want to aim for cities and states with high populations of your other factors we discussed that have higher income levels and, if you can find it, where more people use similar products. So when you think of high end cosmetic products where do you think of first? How about Los Angeles, New York, or Miami? These are all major cities with high incomes and are generally big on appearance. Not to sound mean, these are big cities with major influence in the fashion industry. 

Now that you have a group of people narrowed down, you then want to make sure it is specific enough or make sure it is not too specific. Again, general rule is 5% total population. Now target your next marketing campaign towards these people. Ways to actually do the marketing will be discussed in a later publication. It is always good to go back and analyze a marketing campaign when it is done. Did your ROI increase? Where there more people in one area of your demographic buying your product more than others? Do you think you may have left a group of people out? If you find any opportunities during your analysis, adjust them for your next campaign. Even after you found your market, you should continue to analyze in case a shift changed. This is why it is a good idea to get a marketing consultant or hire a marketing firm. Half the challenge is determining your market and how to get to that market the best.

The Principals of Six Sigma Methodology and how it can help your Business- Defining 5S

          Before I dive into this methodology I want to remove the thought that this only applies to industrial industries. When this was first developed, it was developed with the thought of manufacturing companies in mind. So many of the terms will seem this way, but the overall methodology can be applied to ANY industry. I will give examples of this to help with understanding. Much of this is common sense, the problem is that most companies do not do apply the 5S idea. What is 5S? It stands for sort, straighten, scrub, standardize, sustain. The basic philosophy of this is to keep a clean and organized workplace. Companies do not realize the importance and actual impact that a non-cleaned workplace is. 

          So why is it important to be cleaned and organized? There are the quick answers that I always get; to be safe, or so you don’t lose things. Yes, these are acceptable answers. A dirty place can cause accidents. For example if you leave something on the floor someone can trip and fall. If you do not put something back it could get thrown away on accident. Now outside of the general ideas we need to better understand the concept of lean six sigma. This is a methodology that makes a company more efficient. This can be any process implemented into a company to save time in creating a product. This is where breaking down the five S’ are so important.

Sort: This is basic organization of an area in a workplace. This is where you can remove unneeded items in the area and make sure everything is useful. This includes replacing or removing broken equipment that can no longer be used. This will also give you the chance to find out what may be missing to replace what you need that isn’t even there.

Straighten: For me this is the most important stage as far as getting things where they need to be. The last stage made sure everything in the area was needed. This stage puts things where they need to go and creates a system for organizing it all. Imagine a tool bench. You have screwdrivers, wrenches, and hammers laying everywhere. Last stage you threw away the broken tools. Now that you have the good tools left you need to put them in the right area. Maybe you make a drawer for each type of tools. Another good way is color coding each tool. Put a blue sticker on all hammers and green on the screwdrivers. Then mark a designated area for each color. You can trace a spot for each tool. That gives you a visual spot to place it when done. Not only will this step help you quickly find items, but it also ensures everything gets put back.

Scrub: This step is not really set up to clean the items. This should be done in the sort step. Scrub is the step in which management and employees will set up a schedule to continuously review and clean items going forward. By setting a cleaning routine, this will reduce the chance of breaking equipment as well as save time during actual production (since this step is done outside of normal production hours).

Standardize: This step is more for management. This is to design and set up a quality review of all work stations to ensure the previous steps are continued to be followed. By setting up quality and a general review of making sure this is done, it will help ensure employees understand the importance of it all. This is also the step where management will make charts and reports to track condition of machines or equipment overtime. This is also where you set into place monitoring systems that tracks the results f the changes to see how much of an impact it is making.

Sustain: This is the step where the company as a whole adopts the 5S methodology. It is important to not only maintain the first four steps, but to also improve and expand them. Maybe your company tests this with only one section of its company. After a month or two you find it to be successful and you then move to another section to apply it. This is a good example of expanding and improving on 5S.

Example with computer file management:

So as I said, I want to be able to show you that this can be applied in any field so I am going to pick in my mind an industry far away from a manufacturing line and go with file management. There is a law firm in Miami Florida who did not organize any of their electronic files.

Before 5S: They saved all their files in one folder and when they needed something they manually searched for the file or they would use a search function. The problem was that they named files different things and there was no uniform process behind it. One account would use first name, another account would be last name. They also handled several types of lawsuits which was all saved in the same folder.

Applying 5S: After going in and reviewing their organization we determined that the best approach would be to organize work by applying different folders for each type of service they provide. There was one for divorce, one for bankruptcy and so on. If you click in any of those they will then have the year the claim was started. This help keep general organization. A uniform file name was also designed using last name and date of birth. This allowed a very quick search to find files. On top of this each account folder had a different icon and a different color to help visually differentiate them. 

Results from applying 5S: By designing this level of detail we were able to create a file management system that saved over two minutes per search to find files. This may not seem like a large amount but that is two minutes less that a client had to wait to get helped. On average this company pulled around 30 files per day per employee. That is 60 minutes saved (one hour) per day that the employee now gets to do other things. This also reduced the chance of losing files altogether. It was determined that on average 1 out of every forty files saved was titled something that was not searchable and was considered lost where they had to redo paperwork. 

          As stating in the beginning most of this seems like common sense, but the fact is that some industries are harder to organize and maintain than others. It is key to make sure that when this method is started that it is not a one time thing. It is pointless to spend the time or money on if six months down the line it is not followed. To fully roll something like this out a company should spend 3-6 months to implement and get it all set up. To be the most effective it needs to not be a quick “spring cleaning” but an initiative to get a more efficient process for all levels of the company. On average companies run between 40-60% efficiency. By implementing these simple tools, it can increase efficiency 15-20% on average for process cycle time! If you are not sure how to implement this in your company, it is a good idea to bring in a consulting firm that specializes in this. It is important to make a healthy and accepting workplace environment to it before even attempting to make changes. This sometimes can be the hardest part.

More information about six sigma methodology coming in the future. Please read and review them to see how they can help your business grow.

Social Media and Marketing- When to use it and when will it be successful

                One of the questions I get the most is “which social media should I use to promote my company?” I generally give a generic answer because once I start going into detail I see the glazed look go over people’s eyes. Social media is a GREAT way to sell and promote a company. You can generate a lot of leads and sales by having a Facebook, Twitter, or Youtube account for your business. That being said, do you as a business owner know how much time your spending on these sites building and promoting, and how much business you are actually getting from it? 

                When I do marketing analysis for a company the first thing I do is look at the product and determine a target demographic. This is a group of people who I think would be interested in the product or service they are trying to sell. After that I create a detailed marketing plan that may or may not involve social media. This is based off demographics for all the different social media sites. I not only put in the plan which sites to use, but how much time, energy, and most importantly money is put into the site. I base this all of ROI (return on investment). I want to ensure where I am putting the money is where I will get the most leads. If I put $10,000 towards social media I want to see the company get that much business back or more within a certain time frame. It is not good business to put $10,000 in advertisement into a media that may only give you $5,000 back.

                The next thing I usually get back is the money being put towards traditional media and advertisement. Again, this is part of market strategy and analysis. The internet is a great way of advertisement but as long as people who give potential business are still leaving their house, you should be putting money to advertise in the “real world”.  It is true that social media is much cheaper to do. Most of my techniques in social media advertisement is free! The thing with traditional advertisement is that it will get people who do not use the internet or social media to notice you. There are many ways of doing this as well that can be done with a small budget.

Here are a couple scenarios to help explain:

                Scenario 1- A company in San Francisco is launching a new handheld gaming device. It is a product that does not link with any current gaming systems (ps3, xbox). It has its own selection of games, many similar to what is offered on other systems. They want to create a marketing advertisement but after development and production they have a small budget for the first 6 months of launch. After reviewing the product we determine we want a 70/30 split on media. 70% of funding will be put towards social and online media. A site was developed, Facebook was set up to target males 16-24 (determined initial demographic), and a twitter account was set up to help give updates of the product.  A linkdin account was also set up to market and network with other companies to help with distribution and sales. We then put 30% of the budget towards traditional advertisement. We designed and printed posters and fliers to put in malls, video game stores, and used money to help launch promos with movies that came out with a related video game.

                In this scenario it made sense to direct a lot of money towards social media. Not only is our demographic very large on social media sites (16-24 male gamers) but since the product was an electronic gaming device, it was a safe assumption that many “gamers” also had an online presence. We did want to do other marketing to ensure we were seen around competition in the stores and create a presence outside of social media as well.

                Scenario 2- A candle making company based out of Salt Lake City needs a marketing campaign to launch their new scented candles. They have no market presence currently. After review of the product we determined that we wanted to sell these with a more traditional approach. Instead of selling directly to customers, the company wanted to sell to other companies to distribute. We determined to still create a website where they could sell directly and a Linkdin, Facebook, and blog was set up. These were set up primarily to set up a fan base and create brand presence. We only spent about 20% of their budget on creating this. The rest went towards contacting and creating networks with other businesses and creating banners, flyers, posters, and displays for the products in the stores that carry them. This will help make their product stand out from the competition.

                In this scenario we determined it was important to develop a web presence as well as a way to sell directly to the loyal customers who do not want to go to the store each time. We did find it more logical to do more traditional advertisement and media within the stores where they will be sold from. 

                It is important to realize that market strategies should be reviewed continuously. It is important to review to see what is working and what isn’t. If you thought using one media was good, but after 3 months of putting money into it and getting no new business it is a good idea to possibly adjust or abandon that media. I also always suggest trying every media and gauging the results from it. Also watch for new technology and media that may work well for your business. Marketing is simple in getting the word out, but is very complex when it comes to ROI and being effective and efficient.  If you are not sure what to do it may be a good idea to hire or at least talk to a marketing or media expert.