subject: A Small Change In Business Can Make A Large Impact [print this page] Looking at the overall health of your business, are you convinced that next year is going to be better? For many companies, this current ending year was much better than the previous year which was much better than the year prior. As the economy continues to recover, are you ready for the obstacles that face your company?
Hopefully, out of sheer necessity or the desire to improve, your company took the opportunity over the last few years to improve its processes and become more productive. With everything being slower for just about everyone, it may have been a good time to take the additional time to alter things around that may have required fixing for a long time.
Looking at the way things are executed and the way they have been done for a long time might make it more difficult to actually initialize the modification. When men and women do things the same way for years at a time and it's never changed, even though it could be improved, then it's challenging to make them see that change might be a good thing. Change does not have to be dramatic and you dont have to alter everything to make the improvement, sometimes a small change is all it takes.
A small change to part of the process might make a huge difference by the time you get to the end of the process. It can often have a snowball effect, not only for the process that's being altered, but for the business as a whole. When one department sees the modifications and effort that another department has put into fixing an issue, they might be inspired to take action for themselves. It is a culture of change that needs to be instilled in every department, that way everybody is working towards the same goal which is continuous improvement. Always striving to get better ensures that you'll not get complacent and lazy when it comes to making things as good as they can be.
When everybody begins to think that it is as good as it can get and stop looking for ways to make modifications, then there is nowhere else to go. When the top has been reached, then there is no more growth and no more improvements, you may as well call it a day and start doing something else. The point is that the improvements should never feel like they are done.
