Want To Make Important Improvements?

Certainly you do; this may help:

I firmly believe two principles will help you improve the work of your company or team – be it delivering client service, decreasing response time, better handling client requests, getting tasks done correctly and more quickly, improving internal communications, or fixing complaints – which will help your company be better at serving clients, run more efficiently, and be an even better pace to work.

The first principle to making improvements is to ask the people who are actually doing the work how to make it better. They’ll know, especially if you sincerely encourage them in addition to conveying the importance of their input to the company and that you have confidence in and trust them.

Ask them to be creative and aggressive in their thinking of new ideas, challenging the status quo. Once they appreciate your sincerity and trust and are assured that yours is not a top down approach, watch how their enthusiasm, energy, creativity, and pride increases.

The second principle is that what gets measured, gets improved. It’s human nature. You’ll ignite your team’s competitive juices. Ask that they determine how to measure the output, response time and other metrics of where they stand so that they will be able to show you the improvements they have accomplish in the future.

If this directly affects your clients, it may well be appropriate to have your people explain their mission and method of seeking improvement, and to ask for their input and ideas.

This approach is simple and it works best – usually vastly better than top down directives.

I ask that this week you select some service or work function of your company or team, gather your people together, and ask them if they could please challenge the way it’s done now. If you unleash their creativity and find a way(s) to do what you do even better, this will be a great achievement.

And, to top it off, through the process, your company or team and your people will be even better!