Planning is critical to determine the best course of action After the assessment.
Results of Innovation
June 7, 2010 By Leave a Comment
Innovation creates;
- Increased Productivity
- Lower Labor Costs
- Motivated Employees
- Loyal Employees
- Happy Employees
- Happy Owners
One of the common questions that gets asked as people talk is “What do you do?” I think most of us know what we do, and can explain it to people. However, after you talk to people can they tell their friends what you do. I have been trying now for six months to get it to the next level. Now I think I have it.
So when people ask me what I do I can tell them, “I am a business consultant that increases productivity and lowers labor costs.”
These seam like they would not go together. That is where the magic of innovation comes in. The first and most critical step for innovation is “asking questions.” Such as; “How can we do this better?” “How can we do this faster?” ”Why am I doing it like this?” “What does the customer want?”
The next step, and the most powerful, is listening to the answers. Without listening innovation will never live. This is also the phase of innovation that involves creating the plan of action.
Next is ACTION, this is where experimentation puts new innovation into play and where the results are found, tested, and improved. This is the exciting part, whether it’s a success or failure. Like Thomas Edison, you must be prepared to fail. Learning comes from failure and should be expected. Failure should be also be painful, pain is what we learn from. I have spent more than 20 year experimenting, feeling the pain and finding what works. Good planing and experience can avoid experimentation and pain.
Once the learning is complete this where companies pull ahead of their competition and win the day. Increasing productivity and lowering labor cost are big parts of helping companies find the win.
With my 20 years of experience(from experimentation and pain) I can help significantly reduce
No Cost Motivation – Make sure you do it correctly
October 10, 2009 By Leave a Comment
I just read this article The No-Cost Way to Motivate – BusinessWeek by Patrick Lencioni.
The article basically suggests that managers need to be more aware of the lives of the people the manage. I think it doesn’t go far enough. 
I believe managers should have conversations with people they manage. Then need to listen and find out what need, what they want, and what their hopes and dreams are. Not only should we listen, but we should try and find ways for to meet those needs and wants. Of course they need to be appropriate, timely and prudent.
While I hope managers will do these things I know few will take this advice. But I can hope.
I have had hundreds of people who work for me. Many of those people, given the chance, would come to work with me if I called them up today. Because they know I listen and respect them.
Freedom Beats China by Accident
September 27, 2009 By Leave a Comment
Another anecdotal story about Owner thinking.
Running around, like chickens sans a head, two partners had started a company. They were spending 12-14 hours a day just to get a few orders out the door. They had a bunch of employees and One employee did nothing but try and keep track of the orders. And they were just barley scraping by making about $20,000 a month. If a customer had a problem, they didn’t get help and became a lost customer.
Step in the web guy/ savior / accidental implementer of Owner Thinking. The partners originally contacted him for just a little help with some simple functionality for customers to be able to submit requests for work to their website.
The Web Designer/programmer also did another thing that most technical people don’t do. He went to the company and worked in their facility for a few days to see what their processes were.
He presented them with a plan to be create a work flow system using the web. It took a couple of months but he built a system that would receive the request for an order. and then track it through the production process. He also created a queue to handle problems.
All of the production was done on a computer. A customer, from any where in the world, would send a picture that the to company to convert into a program that would be used by embroidery machines to stitch the picture onto fabric.
The second key to success and was the owners had been paying the employees per design to produce the artwork. This is a key to getting the employees to think like owners.
The employees realized the more work they did the more money they made. They also realized if the design came back, because of quality issues, they would have to fix it for free. Because of this they did things right the first time. They were thinking and acting just like the owner would. This coupled with the new work flow system ignited a firestorm of new business.
In just 6 short months they had gone from $20,000 a month to over $90,000. The owners were no long involved in the production and could focus on promoting their business. They had also reduced the amount of production employees by more than half. I think it was from 10 people to 4 people.
One of the other effects was that this company started being able to compete with China for orders. They were doing the work faster, better and at less of a cost to the customer.
How can this be? Because the employees were free to think like owners.
You pay an employee an hourly wage or a salary to create a slave. You give a person the freedom to create, innovate and control their own destiny you create a loyal patriot. A patriot that will work extremely hard for that freedom.
Get the Boss To Pay You More
September 15, 2009 By 2 Comments
I realized that most of the posts on this blog are directed at business owners. However there are a lot more employees than there are owners. So I thought I’d talk to the employees.
As an Employee How would you like to make 20% more? 30% more? 50% more?
Here are a couple of examples: #1 I was moved to an office that was missing deadlines. I designed a way for each employee to make more money if they completed more work. It took about 2 months. But at the end of the two months the average wage in the office had improved from $8 an hour to $12 an hour. And there was one person that was a really hard worker and he was making over $20 an hour. And we were beating our deadlines by two hours. Even though we were paying the employees more it was not costing the company any more than it had before. Happy employees and happy company
Example #2: There was a scanning job. I felt it was a bit unfair. The operators could only make $12 an hour because they couldn’t make the scanner go any faster. It was a critical job and I wanted the employees to be rewarded for being dependable and loyal. This was actually an employee idea. They said “can we run two scanners?” But what they were really saying was can I double the amount of money I make. I thought this was a great idea. Because it turned an average paying job into one of the highest paying jobs in the office., at $24 an hour. Once again the employees were happy and it didn’t cost the company any more to get the same amount of work done. Happy employees and happy company.
Have you ever felt like you were working your butt off and the person next to you was slacking. But you were getting paid the same? This is the way I get people paid more. I figure out how to make sure the hard working employees get more money and the slackers get less.
I have done it for thousands of employees.
And I can do it for you!
If you want talk to people who have worked for me and with me. Contact me and I will get you names of people who have felt the cash in their pockets.
And I can do it for you.
Many industries have been paying their employees this way for many years. Doctors, Lawyers and other high paying professionals are getting paid this way now and have been for a long time. How do you think they get paid so much money? I think they like it. I think you will like it too.
Just tell your owner. Hey I heard about a guy that can make you more money in this down Economy. And have him give me a call.
210.825.6535
Outrage over bonuses
September 11, 2009 By Leave a Comment
Wall St bonuses spark outrage on Main Street USA | Reuters
Are you mad that wall street bankers are getting million dollar bonuses while you can’t make your house payment?
Why do the get that kind of money and you can just barely get buy. Pay-for-performance is the answer. They get paid by what they produce so the bigger the deal the bigger the paycheck. This is the same for doctors and Lawyers. All professions were they make big bucks. All doctors learn the more patients they see the more procedures they preform, the more staff they hire the more they will get paid.
More owners need to figure this out and start paying their employees they same way they get paid.
For instance every owner of a McDonald Franchise makes money for every burger that gets sold. He makes more money when people like the burger and come back. If the employees got paid for every burger that was sold and them more for people coming back they would make sure the customer is taken care of. This is an over simplification but I hope you get the idea.
Do you want to get paid like a doctor or a Lawyer?
Have the owner of your company give me a call or send me an e-mail. I know how to make him more money too.
My phone number is 210.825.6535 and my e-mail is dee.gardner @ dmgsouth.com
So Many Cool Things on the Web
September 8, 2009 By Leave a Comment
Everyday I am discovering cool new things on the web. I am going to add more of these things to my posts. For instance there was a cool article in the Wall Street Journal about getting jobs from tweeting. Here is the link Job tweeting
I will continue to add these things. Remember I am also in the process of changing my focus from just web development consulting, which I am good at to also include my superpower of compensation consulting where I show business owners how to get their employees to think and act like owners. It’s incredible what can be done with a few small changes to a business.
Web technology is something that can make these changes easier and quicker. That is why it is so important that I stay current and devote some of my focus to web technology.
Thanks to Stock.xchng for the cool photo
Working less makes you more money
September 4, 2009 By Leave a Comment
Results of their study were in and they couldn’t believe what they found.
My cousin is one of the owners for a company that copies legal documents.
They were looking for ways to try and make more profit. One of the ways was to figure out how much work their employees were doing and maybe get them to do some more work. They had been keeping track of who was doing what jobs and so they started researching what every employee did.
The were a little surprised by what they found.
The oldest, more loyal employee was doing the least amount of work. I was talking to my cousin and explained to him she had been there the longest and had figured out better than anyone how to look like a good employee without doing more work. He agreed.
It’s been a year since I had the conversation and so I gave him a call to see what had happened. He said that employee no longer worked there and he had a great crew now. They are being more productive. He believes some of the younger workers only work hard for a couple of years and start to slack off. He said his crew was a little more mature and he thinks they are working harder.
This also brings up a good point. Most of the time pay-for-performance isn’t something managers never understand. They all are thinking things are running smoothly and the company is profitable. Why do I need to fix something that isn’t broken.
And most people will go on with their lives.
This is the question are you willing to do what it takes to make the change?
I know I can help my cousin’s business $100,000 more in profit every year. Oh well his loss.
