This remarkable episode takes us on a journey like never before. A journey all about the importance of physical wellbeing and how this is a vital part of your business strategy.

I talk to my good friend, Jon Denoris, founder of “Club 51” London’s exclusive bespoke fitness studio, about the role that good health and physical well-being plays in business. It’s phenomenal, to say the least.

Jon, a trained “Exercise Scientist” who specialises in Exercise Psychology and Behavioural Change, walks us through the striking similarities between a successful health and wellness regime and kaizen!

I found this fascinating and amazingly true.

Jon’s 10 Tips to Get Your Heath Back On Top of the Priorities List.

1. Create a “Business Plan” for your health, complete with goals , dates and milestones
2. Write Down your Health and Wellness Goals
3. Break them up into Smaller Goals
4. Start Gradually (true kaizen style)
5. Benefit  from as little as 10 Minutes a Day
6. Gradually increase this to several 10 Minute Sessions a day
7. Why not push it to 15 Minutes a Session?
8. Don’t try and take on Too much, Too soon
9. Look back at your Original Target
10. Analyse where you are and look ahead

If this doesn’t inspire into physical action- I don’t know what will !

Why oh why did I put my neck on the block ?

Find out about a massive commitment that I fully intend to live up to, with Jon’s assistance of course. Listen till the end for this “spur of the moment” announcement !

This episode is guaranteed to kick start your new year and get you inspired into prioritising your greatest asset, your good health.

Jon’s Contact Details

Founder, Club 51

Nike Master Trainer

The Harrods Personal Trainer

Kinetica-Sports Fitness Ambassador

http://www.clubfiftyone.co.uk/

Facebook :http://www.facebook.com/Club51

Twitter: @jondenoris

Kelvin Newman is the resident expert on Internet Marketing Podcast,  UK’s most popular internet marketing podcast, downloaded by over half a million people. In this episode, I ask him what it takes to have such a well-respected podcast that continues to attract a huge following.

With over 138 episodes to date, the Internet marketing podcast mixes topical news and views, questions and answer sessions, as well as expert interviews from the likes of bestselling author Seth Godin, lifestyle experimentalist, Tim Ferris and the godfather of website usability, Jacob Nielsen.

Subject Matter Experts do not come any larger than this, as Kelvin is also the Creative Director, at Sitevisibilty, one of UK’s leading Search Engine Marketing & Optimisation agencies. He’s written an awesome link building book, “Becoming a Clockwork Pirate” that he offers for free. I get to know why he gives so much valuable information for free. There’s a good business reason behind this.

Kelvin explains key steps on how to quickly find out if, and what Social Media networks are best suited for the small business owner. I also ask him to take us through practical steps any entrepreneur should be taking in-order to “bootstrap it on the internet”, or spending as little money as possible to get set up and running effectively on the internet.

If you are looking for real, proven, solid, free tips and advice relating to Internet Marketing, the next 30 minutes will prove to be the best time you’ll invest today. Take a good listen, learn and enjoy.

 Links

The Internet Marketing Podcast

Site Visibility

Inspiring Motivational Videos was launched last week after several months in the pipeline. This innovative daily personalized video service allows members to receive emails, directly to their Mailbox, that deliver a massively inspiring video on a daily basis.

These beautifully crafted videos, deliver a key motivational message that anyone can act upon, inspiring you to live your life to the fullest. Imagine if in each and every day of the next 12 months, you had a spark of inspiration to motivate you into taking action, nudging you to make a difference to your life, whether it be business, relationships, career, faith or wisdom and suggesting ways that will help you succeed and holding yourself accountable for taking action. This is what Inspiring Motivational Videos is set out to do.

“We know what one can do when one feels motivated. Coming up with the Inspiring Motivational Videos website and service is our own proof that daily inspiration indeed goes a long way” said Brian Venge, one of the co-founders of the service. The other co-founder is  Tinashe Venge, his son, a Journalism and Communications student.

Brian is a naturally gifted video producer, freelancing on odesk whilst Tinashe, also an odesk freelancer,  is a prolific writer and editor. So when you bring these complimentary skills and talents together you create an unstoppable force that became the inspiration behind this product.

Brian went on to say ” We saw a great opportunity in the market to introduce this innovation to people like ourselves, business and family oriented individuals with ambitions, dreams and beliefs.  Although motivational and inspiring words and quotes have been shared for thousands of years, packaging them into a captivating video to deliver this message is truly revolutionary.  If words can move a person, and a if a picture says a thousand words, just imagine what video can do. ”

“We not only wanted people to enjoy our videos, but importantly, to do something about them , every single day. this why we close off each video with a specific Call to Action , for the viewer to take immediate action as a result of the motivation for the day”  added Tinashe.

“The Smallbizkaizen blog reader is someone I always  had in mind when developing this product because I’ve been there when the chips are down, when the going gets tough, so rather than throw in the towel, all one needs is a spark of motivation to ignite inspiration” went on Brian.

Watch the Brian and Tinashe Venge video for more inspiring reasons behind the creation of this product and Sign Up a free 7 day Trial and see for yourself how these videos will change the way you look at the day ahead.

Today’s episode is a special one as I go back to my true Kaizen roots and speak with Bruce Hamilton, the President of the GBMP (Greater Boston Manufacturing Partnership), a non-profit provider of lean technology.  Bruce has extensive experience in all forms of Continuous Improvement including TPS, Lean and Kaizen, having worked in manufacturing and administration roles for a number of organisations.

Bruce is an author and actor in the 2004 video, Toast Kaizen (recipient of 2005 Academic Shingo Prize), used world-wide to introduce the basics of lean manufacturing, as well as Toast VSM (recipient of the 2011 Academic Shingo Prize).

We talk about the book he co-authored, a comprehensive multimedia training package, e2 Continuous Improvement System, the famous Toast Kaizen DVD and how this has taken a life of its own.

Bruce acknowledges the importance of having the right environment within an organisation in which ideas can be put into practice and one in which employees are not afraid to take chances.

Check out Bruce’s blog at www.oldleandude.org that covers a wide range of TPS-related anecdotes.

Links :

GBMP

Toast Kaizen DVD

23rd Annual Shingo Prize Conference

Gallery Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Problem Solving is the essence of any Continuous Improvement effort.  In this episode, I go back to the fundamentals of Kaizen and focus on the art of problem solving as a basic business improvement tool.

I discuss 10 common problem solving tools and techniques that will bring sustainable solutions and show how all of these methods hinge on 3 vital principles of

a)      Measuring the Impact of the Problem

b)      Taking Action

c)      Reviewing and Measuring the Impact of the Action

My Top 10 Problem Solving Tools

1. Is/Is Not Tool
2. Pareto’s 80:20 Rule
3. The 5 Why’s
4. Brainstorming
5. Checklists
6. Poka Yoke
7. Process Imagineering
8. Value Stream Mapping
9. Fishbone / Ishikawa / Cause and Effect
10. DMAIC

Image: Salvatore Vuono / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Listening to your customers’ feedback is a vital, fundamental element for any business.

At the very least, the voice of the customer is a sure way to ignite the innovation and continuous improvement flames for your business.

Yet, how often is this “back to basics” requirement neglected when a business conducts market research, opting instead to go with gambles, gut-feels and untested assumptions ?

Today however, the advent of social networks and unlimited access to the internet has opened up new ways to listen to your customers.

One such innovative product is IdeaScale, a powerful online tool, based on empowering communities to have a say in driving innovation for a business.

The tool automates the process of collecting ideas from your customers and encourages a voting process to ensure the most important ideas “bubble” to the top of the list.

In this podcast episode, I speak to Rob Hoehn, the co-founder and president of customer development at IdeaScale and ask him where it all began for his company and what inspired him and his colleagues to come up with this idea generation and management tool.

We discuss the main features of this online tool such as the seamless integration with Facebook, Twitter, WordPress and  smart phones as well as the several cool applications this tool has.

For a typical small business, the free, fully functional version of  IdeaScale will probably suffice for your crowd-sourcing needs, with an option to upgrade to feature rich price plans.

If your business is serious about improvement through innovation, then start by listening to what your customers really want, instead of trying to figure out what they want.

Listen to your customers, listen to the Podcast!

Go on and test drive IdeaScale.

Read about the Idea Scale Case Studies

Rob Hoehn’s inspiration comes from this book

Running any business without the use of Intelligence or Insight is foolhardy. It’s akin to driving a car in pitch darkness, with the headlights turned off ! Although you might start the car, move a few metres, will you reach your destination? I doubt it.

Business Intelligence is what informs the best of business decisions, serving as the headlights for your business by showing where to turn, slow down and avoid obstacles on the journey to achieving your business objectives.

There are many ways to collect business intelligence and fortunately, today the internet provides a vast array of  free methods and tools to gather business intelligence and empower your decisions.

In this episode, I provide practical methods, mostly free and web based, to source for a balanced view of your overall business insight.

In particular, I cover details on how you can collect business insight around the 4 key areas of your business:

Customer Insight – listening to the “Voice of the Customer”
Organisational Insight - a powerful SWOT analysis tool
Competitive Analysis – spark Innovation by analysing your competition
Market Trends – strategies to stay ahead of the game

Enjoy !

References made in the podcast:

Techcrunch

Euromonitor

Nielsen

The 4-Hour Body: An Uncommon Guide to Rapid Fat-Loss, Incredible Sex, and Becoming Superhuman

Viral Heat

Action Plan Download Link

Dont forget to send me your questions on any Business Improvement , Kaizen or Continuous Improvement topic or issue.

The first 3 people to send me a question will receive the complete PIMP YOUR BIZ Package, 100% free !

Send an email to brian@smallbizkaizen.com or use the Contact Us Page to pose your question and stand a chance to win this awesome book package prize .

Main Photo Credit

Writing a solid Business Plan doesn’t have to be as hard as you think.  If 2011 is the year you want to start a business, chances are, you’re going to need a Business Plan.

Whilst some people see the process of writing a good Business Plan challenging, good practical help  is always at hand, if you look for it in the right places.

In this episode, I speak to Craig Frazier of Business Plan Examples about what inspired him to come up with  The Business Plan Toolkit, a DIY  business plan writing template. It is based on a real life coffee shop business plan and uses the familiar MS Word format so it can be updated for any small business.

The Toolkit also includes the 1 year financial Pro-Forma used to project profit and loss, as well as a break-even analysis chart to graphically display to investors where the break-even point is for sales and profit.

Craig discusses:

• His entrepreneurial beginnings and what keeps him motivated
• Why the Executive Summary is the Make or Break element of a Business Plan
• Why a Business Plan should be for a specific audience  - i.e  board of directors, a bank or venture capitalist or for personal use
• Getting Started and taking the first Step in Writing a Wining Business Plan
• How he draws inspiration for the book Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion and Purpose written by Tony Hsieh, the CEO of Zappos  and to “stick with your gut”  while growing a business.

“If you can’t articulate who you are and what you want to be through a business plan then your company will lack direction and focus”

As a special gratuity gesture to a few lucky Small Biz Kaizen Podcast Listeners, Business Plan Examples has kindly donated 5 Free Business Plan Toolkits to the first 5 people to write a comment on this very post !

So Hurry and be one of the first 5 people to comment, and receive a FREE complimentary copy of this tried and proven template.

Leave Your Comments Below !

Always stay close and keep a watch on what your competitors are up to. Innovative new products and services could just be the very thing that differentiates your business from your competitors.Remember this works both ways because your competition is not sleeping either.

Be your Competitor’s Customer

This may sound counter intuitive but it’s far from it. This is the best form of Competitive Analysis for use where your business is in direct competition and/or produces similar goods to your competition. It’s one of the simplest yet most informative methods to analyse your competition’s unique selling point. With the information you gather here, you’ll be able to judge how your business compares as well as the magnitude of the gap.

In the event that your business has no competition or is in a very small niche, why not flip this around and start exploring areas or businesses you may want to expand into.

Let’s delve into the type of information you should be after. Remember to always align and customise the following checklist to suit your particular business.

The Purchasing Experience

• How much did you pay including any discounts / offers?
• What options were available to purchase via (sales channels)?
• Speed of delivery (if applicable)
• What is the returns policy / money back guarantee?
• If purchased in person, how friendly were the personnel?

The Goods

• How many variations (if any) were offered?
• How was the presentation/packaging? (if applicable)
• What technology was used/ does it use? (if applicable)
• What are the features and benefits?
• What was your experience in using / consuming the goods?

The Quality

• What materials make up the goods? (reverse engineering where applicable)
• Are the goods fit for the intended purpose ?

Back Up Service

• How accessible are the Customer Services?
• How long does it take to get an issue resolved? (make up a small problem with the goods received)
• Is there a FAQ or Trouble shooting guide?

At the end of this exercise, list all the  attributes and variables where your current offering/performance is below your competition. These become your opportunities for improvement .

A really special episode in which my son, Tinashe, a Journalism and Communications undergraduate student, interviews me about my book, PIMP YOR BIZ, launched this week.

It was great to be in the hot seat for a change and face the music. Amongst other things, I get grilled on:

What inspired me to write The Book?

How I came up with Book Title?

A brief outline of the book itself

My reasons for opting for an eBook format

What makes my book different from other books covering similar subjects?

This young man is so smart, he managed to plug his own blog in the first minute of our interview, on my own show !

Check out Tinashe’ s Blog

For a Sneak Preview of the Book, Here is your complimentary  Download   Link.

How to Get The Full eBook Package

A brand new 2011 year presents a great opportunity to start something new for your business.

Why not tap into the many, mostly free, productivity and business improvement tools available and unleash the power of web 2.0 business tools for your business.

True to the Christmas spirit, this episode focuses on:

12 Tools to Improve your Business.

1. Mindmeister – An online mind mapping brainstorming  software for Project Management, Brain Storming, great for innovative people and businesses collaboration in real time.  http://www.mindmeister.com/
2.  IdeaScale - Idea collection platform where customers submit their ideas and vote for the best ones http://ideascale.com/
3. Evernote - Capture images, text, audio and video as a means to help you remember everything. http://evernote.com
4. Viral Heat – Track who is mentioning what in any of the Social Network Platforms. Viralheat covers every corner of the social web from Google Buzz, Facebook, Twitter, Real-time web, to YouTube.  http://www.viralheat.com/?r=8833
5. Twitter
6. Google
7. YouTube
8. Zune
9. Yahoo Answers
10. Mocking Bird  
11. DropBox
12. oDesk

Subscribe to the Podcast via Zune

Photo Credit

In this part 2 and conclusion to the Google Introduction to business products presentation, Daniel Bornstein takes us through how YouTube is transforming the face of search and shares some amazing statistics, proving why any business cannot afford to ignore YouTube.

Technologies in use today allow ads to be served to consumers based on the content they’re reading using the most powerful contextual technology in the world.  Category advertising on the other hand, is all about serving ads to consumers based on our categorisation of thousands of sites. Lastly, Placement targeting ads are served to consumers based on specific sites on the Google Display Network.

If you are looking for alternative ways to reach new audiences, then YouTube could just be the way. Did I mention its free?

A Few YouTube Stats to Convince You

The  Reach

YouTube is now the 2nd Search engine after Google

448 Million visitors each month

2 Billion daily video views

The Audience

5% of the time spent on the internet  is spent on YouTube

Target your audience via Theme, Interests  or Demographic

Photo Credit

Google Adwords offers one of the quickest routes for your website to rank highly. Also referred to as “sponsored links” a well-researched and executed Adwords campaign can perform exceptionally well, exceeding the Return On Investment (ROI) when compared to the alternative method of using SEO (search engine optimisation, where your website relies on natural or organic search).

Lest face it, despite hiring the very best of SEO experts and or building many quality links to your website, new websites tend to take a much long time and massive efforts to naturally rank in the top 10. Those that do are not guaranteed of staying on top of their search term either. It’s an on-going fight for google supremacy.

The Google Adwords or Pay per Click search option is based on an auction system where the amount you will pay for any of your Ads to appear is based on a Rank calculated from the Max CPC (the Maximum amount you are willing to pay for a click) and the Quality Score (an algorithm score based on the relevance of your website to what you have advertised.)

Ad Rank = MaxCPC x Quality Score

In essence, the higher your quality score, the lower the price you will pay per click.

This episode focuses on how your business can use Adwords as a strategy for instant high ranking, provided all other elements are in place. The presentation also covers Google’s content network channels including how You Tube is now the second most used search platform. Lastly, the rise and a rise in the use of mobile phone browsing requires an adapted approach for you website. Find out how – listen in to enjoy.

Send all your comments and questions to me at  brian@smallbizkaizen.com and I will make sure I answer them for you in future episodes.

Links:

Google Adwords

Photo Credit

KPI or Key Performance Indicator is an indicator, gauge or metric used to measure the performance of a business.

However, not just any indicator will make this elite group of business measures. To belong to this club, a business metric must firstly be considered as “key” or important in showing the direction a business is heading. This is not to say other metrics and indicators are not important, they could be, but are just not as important as others. (Unfortunately not all indicators are created equal).

What Makes an Indicator Key?

Imagine the dashboard of your car at the halfway point of a 287 mile journey. At this moment, you probably have access at a glance to see 10, 12 or more “indicators” giving you all sorts of information and data about your trip, the car and the environment in and around the car.

Of these indicators, there’s probably only a handful that provide you data or information needed for you to arrive alive and keep you on the right road without breaking the law. We call these the non-negotiable indicators (or more appropriately – “ignore them at your own peril” indicators).

Examples of such indicators could be the speed you’re travelling at, turn by turn GPS map instructions, fuel level (or distance to empty tank), traffic announcement information (to avoid traffic jams) and so on.

At the same time you also have indicators such as the Track Number of the CD you’re listening to (a Bob Marley Legend track if its my car), the outside temperature, the oil temperature and of course today’s date.

It’s blatantly obvious which of the two sets of indicators constitute a KPI for your objective of reaching your destination in one piece and without infringing on the traffic laws.

The same is true in your business. KPI’s are parameters and indicators in your business, considered critical to chart the direction for your business and confirm whether you’re still on course to reach your destination (business objectives).

If we take the analogy of the car a little further, there are additional indicators such as when service is due, or brake fluid level which, although critical to reach our destination, do not require us to regularly check them on this 287 mile journey.

KPI’s therefore fall into three generic buckets related to validity periods. Hence, in a business, you’ll always get a combination of the 3 types of KPI’s:

short term (e.g. speed of car)

medium term (fuel gauge)

long term (next service due in xxx miles)

Take a moment to identify the Real McCoy indicators in your business considered absolutely “mission critical”.  Next, classify whether the KPI’s are short, medium or long term.

Why should Your Business care about KPI’s?

It’s easy to see why KPI’s are Business Improvement’s best friend or is it vice versa?  KPI’s in Business Improvement programs confirm the impact all efforts and initiatives taking place within the business at large. KPI’s are like a high court judge whose final ruling should be respected and always stands.

The relationship between effective Improvement efforts and a movement in KPI needs to be linear. Having said this, you should however be wary of the fact that KPI’s can be moved by a number of factors. KPI Movement (sounds like a political party) can also be down to other factors such as seasonality, new product launches, your competition folding up (nice for you!) etc.

Its good practice to look at a few KPI’s in groups at a time whilst attempting to correlate their movements (e.g. a new product launch confirms sales going up whilst at the same time, the number of new customer complaints is shooting through the roof – I wonder why, hmmm?).

KPI’s provide us the trigger moments, the happy moments and the decisive moments where we need to take bold action akin to staying on course the road trip whilst avoiding speeding ticket and accidents.

What 3 KPI’s do you consider “Mission Critical” in your business ?

We conclude the “10 Ways to Optimise your Website and Boost Conversion”. This episode focuses on often overlooked things like optimising the size of images, configuring javascript  so it loads asynchronously and the concept of “keep alive”,  a setting allowing your webserver to keep a connection to the browser open.

There’s in-depth coverage of the importance of Monitoring which in true Kaizen style, is the essence of Continuous Improvement. We also cover how the proper use of DNS and Content Distribution Networks allows websites to distribute content through points of presence globally.

Lastly, whilst your users and customers may be located in specific geographical location, remember your website is being accessed from anywhere on the globe through web crawlers and search engine spiders, confirming  the need for speed for your website to rank higher.  

It was a pleasure to have Kyle York of Dyn DNS and Andy Piggott of Incutio as our guests for these past 2 episodes and hope you’ve picked a few gold nuggets for your website optimisation efforts.

Links referred to:

http://www.smallbizkaizen.com/thebook

http://www.incutio.com/

http://dyn.com/

http://www.incutio.com/blog/2010/10/19/ecommerce-expo-seminar/

http://bytecheck.com/

http://www.webpagetest.org/

http://css-tricks.com/css-sprites/

http://www.whatsmyip.org/http_compression/

http://code.google.com/speed/page-speed/docs/caching.html

Photo Credit

Small Biz Kaizen has just been appointed the resident expert blogger on “Quality Management”, on the hugely popular Free Management Library site.

This online library provides one of the world’s largest collections of well-organized, free resources about personal, professional and organizational development and receives in excess of 1 million visitors per day !

My first post is already online and is titled: Customer Satisfaction is no Longer a Unique Selling Point

We’re very delighted about this excellent development and hope you’ll support us by reading and contributing to the many articles to come.
Its nice to have a BIG brother.

Photo Credit

Optimising your website for speed brings numerous benefits for an online business. An increase in conversions, customer satisfaction plus a reduction in operational costs all positively impacts the bottom line.   In terms of SEO, the faster your website, the higher it will rank in the natural or organic searches.

In this episode we focus on 10 ways to optimise your website and increase conversions. I speak to Kyle York , the VP in charge of Sales and Marketing for Dyn and Andy Piggott, the Managing Director of Incutio. We cover the main factors affecting the speed of a website and more importantly, the steps you can take today to make your website faster and reap the benefits of speed.

In true Kaizen style, we also cover ways in which you can measure some of the more critical metrics . The measurements you should really care about are:

1. TTFB – Time To First Byte. This is the measure of how long it takes for your browser to get data back from a web server after you’ve hit go. During this time the browser must ‘locate’ the website (convert name to number) and then ask the address its given for the relevant webpage. As soon as that webserver sends the first bit of data back, we have our TTFB. This is an important metric as browsers will often start showing the user to the page as soon as the first bytes come back. This test is the best indicator as to whether you have infrastructure problems (DNS, Hosting).

2. TTSR – Time To Start Render. This is the measure of when a site will start rendering the page, this may not be because of infrastructure problems but due to how your site is built, sites with a lot of images or with bad Javascript often experience poor render times.

The Ten Ways to Optimise Your Website :

1. Check your TTFB at: www.bytecheck.com, if it’s higher than say 500m/s, pursue your hosting company as it’s likely to be infrastructure related (eg: slow or overloaded servers).

2. Compress text components using gzip, check if it’s enabled on your site: http://www.whatsmyip.org/http_compression/ – if it isn’t, get your development company or hosting company to enable it.

3. Reduce number of HTTP requests – merge your stylesheets into one document, merge javascript filess together and think about using css sprites: http://css-tricks.com/css-sprites/

4. Use caching, it’s a good thing, read about what Google recommend: http://code.google.com/speed/page-speed/docs/caching.html

5. Optimise your images and use the right ones in the right place; For most logos and computer generated graphics you should be using 8-bit PNGs unless you require animation, when you should be using a GIF. Photographs should usually be saved as JPEGs, and optimised to balance quality and size.

6. Most browsers will download and execute any Javascript files referenced in the ‘head’ section of the page before attempting to render the page to the user, so move what you can to the end of the page. Some scripts (such as Google Analytics) can be loaded asynchronously, which means the browser will download them without delaying other resources.

7. Enable Keep Alive – this allows the browser to download multiple objects from the server without having to create a new connection for each one.  You can find out if Keep Alive is enabled via: www.webpagetest.org, once you test your site then you can see in the “Details” section whether the connections show “Keep Alive”.

8. Monitor everything – we monitor our internal application performance using RPM from newrelic.com and user experience via catchpoint.com, both offer a free trial, why not see how they can enable your business?

9. DNS – hosting companies DNS servers tend to perform inconsistently and slower than dedicated DNS services.  Incutio moved their DNS to the Dynect platform from Dyn.com and experienced improvements of 80 to 3000m/s in different areas of the world.

10. CDN – get your content onto a CDN.  Both Incutio and Dyn partner with Edgecast who have a fantastic network.  Using a CDN improves the performance of your site by delivering the content from locations nearer the user, it also means your servers have to do a lot less work and ultimately reduces costs as well as improving your performance and therefore your conversion.

This Top 10 list has been made possible by Incutio, a web development business that has been specialising in eCommerce Solutions and Content Management Systems for over 10 years.  They run two platforms – www.salesonrails.co.uk for eCommerce and Fabric their content management system.  Incutio does more than just build brilliant sites, the team produce and execute online marketing strategies to grow their clients businesses at a manageable rate.  This includes search engine optimisation, pay-per-click marketing and social media services.  If you’d like to find out how Incutio could help your online business grow, get in touch with them via www.incutio.com or reach out to Andy Piggott at andy@incutio.com

In this episode I announce an exciting book project that’s been keeping me busy for the past few months but nearing completion. The book is entitled PIMP YOUR BIZ – A Complete Guide to Improving Your Business under Any Circumstances.

If you want to be one of 10 people to receive a complimentary copy of Pimp Your Biz, simply send me a message via the Contact Us page and mention “Pimp Your Biz” in the subject field.

I also talk about the Google Introduction to Business products video which now available exclusively for Small Biz Kaizen listeners. This episode features a 10 minute teaser extracted from 1 hr. 10 min video.

In the last part, I invite you to take a look at my new studio backdrop intended for shooting videos, a sign of what’s in store for Small Biz Kaizen as we take podcasting to another level.

Links mentioned in the show

Screencast.com

The Studio Setup Video

How to Access the Google Video Page

Local Search Engine Optimisation and Navigation for online shops is the topic of this 2 part interview.     I speak to Katrin Jaehnke of FACT-FINDER to understand how product specific search works, how this is different to your normal Google search and how to customise the results to best optimise an ecommerce enabled website.

In part 2, I speak to Karl zu Ortenburg, an Internet Strategist based in London whose company, Internet-Experts-Live, specialises in brand building , social media, search optimisation and visitor to customer conversion.

Stay tuned to the end for a surprise announcement, right at the end of this episode. Enjoy.

Links :

http://www.fact-finder.com/

http://www.internet-experts-live.co.uk/

Six Sigma DMAIC is one my most successful Problem Solving Methods that I use in a business or project context . Basic DMAIC is a problem solving process involving 5 steps summarised as: Define, Measure, Analyse, Improve and Control.

Though there are hundreds of other methods available,  DMAIC is one I highly recommend because it remains true to the fundamental principles of Continuous Improvement. It is Simple in Approach,  follows 5 Logical steps  and ensures the decisions you make are based on hard core measured data which helps you deduce the root cause , implement solutions to eliminate the root cause then track to see what results you get. There’s no rocket science here, just  pure common business sense.

DMAIC is ideally suited in situations where your business is constantly faced with reoccurring/repetitive problems that prevent you from forging ahead. Problems that don’t seem to have a known root cause and therefore cannot be solved, typically lend themselves to DMAIC. Let’s explore what each stage is about.

DEFINE:

Problem definition is the first stage of any problem solving. Not only are you recognising your business has a problem, but defining the problem will give you the real purpose and scope of the problem. Always write it down.

The define phase also involves the making up of the wider “Project Team”, people you believe ought to be involved in solving this problem. Together, you all establish and agree to a detailed project plan with key milestones, deliverables and responsibilities.

MEASURE:

In the Measure step, the Project Team goes about collecting data on the problem and start to analyse, root cause style, what could be the potential causes.

ANALYSE:

Analysis phase of the project is typified by maximum participation of everyone in the team to brainstorming the possible causes and confirm the root causes using several different techniques.

The whole DMAIC approach is fact based and therefore no room at all for assumptions. All decisions need to be supported with measured data or indicators, the hard core evidence.

IMPROVE:

Improve stage is all about finding a solution that will nullify or at least significantly reduce the root cause of the problem. Hard core evidence is required to confirm the impact of the solution has had on the problem identified. Success criteria should be clearly measurable.

Depending on the outcome, further actions, responsibilities, timing and a revised plan may need to be agreed by the Project Team to verify the effectiveness of implemented solution.

CONTROL:

Control is there to ensure, the business, process, systems or people do not slip back to old habits. The newly established solution(s) should be embedded and Standardised as a new way of working.

This could involve issuing out new work policies, procedures or instructions or defining training needs as a result of the new way of working. Finally, Control has to do with the sharing and celebrating of successes.

That’s Six Sigma DMAIC Problem Solving – in a nutshell

E Commerce Expo 2010, London provides the scene for this week’s podcast episode. This is an event organised for anyone interested in E Commerce to explore what the web has to offer. Enjoy listening to some of the industry’s top professionals and business people speak about the real issues every Small Business Entrepreneur ought to consider in this digital revolution.

In this part 1 of a 2 Part Series, I speak to Gemma Haggarty, the Head of Minute Steak, a London based PPC and SEO Solutions Company . Minute Steak is ideally suited for small business advertisers with smaller advertising budgets and who do not require a full service digital agency, but still want access to a team of experts that can develop cost effective search strategies.

I also speak with Jean-Philippe Donnio , the President and Managing Director of tbs-internet, a company specializing in electronic transactions security and digital certificates. We discuss SSL certificates, internet browser security as well as the significance and process of securing the digital certificate authenticating websites as secure to transact online. If your business is trading online, you need to be aware of security and fraud risk.

Links to websites discussed in this episode

http://www.minutesteak.co.uk

http://www.tbs-internet.com

The subject of Marketing, Public Relations and Social Media for Small Business is expertly covered in this interview with Chris Lee, founder of Planet Content, an online PR network company made up of freelance UK based tech PR, social media experts, bloggers, podcasters and copywriters. Chris is also behind the free content marketing blog, RunMarketing , a great resource for Small business owners.

Loads of practical tips for the small business are covered in this episode so make the most of social media platforms available today including the latest trends in Geo-Social Networking. The growth in mobile phone surfing will require a different set of blogging rules. If your business is only tweeting, don’t lag behind, get  Geo Social Networking.

My 10 Top Tips for Small Business Social Media Networking (more in this interview)

1. Blog well and blog often.
2. Be Creative with content – venture into podcasting and video.
3. Ensure your audience participates in the platforms you do.
4. Set out your objectives – exactly what you want to achieve.
5. On Twitter, write your own tweets – don’t let someone do this for you.
6. Don’t use the “auto thank you” responder on Tweeter to thank new followers.
7. Get to know and use Geo Social Networks
8. Create blogs tailored in length for both search engines and mobile phone browsing (300 -500 words)
9. Avoid using Flash in your content – will not play on iPhone ( significant smart phone footprint)  .
10. True to Kaizen principles, with online Marketing and PR, measure, monitor, and take action –  don’t stop improving.

Links to websites discussed in this episode

http://www.planetcontent.co.uk/

http://runmarketing.co.uk/

http://foursquare.com/

http://geomium.com/

http://gowalla.com/

http://www.facebook.com/zipcar?v=wall

http://hootsuite.com/

http://econsultancy.com/uk

Internet Marketing Podcast

Mobile applications for smartphones such as the iPhone, Blackberry or Android based systems continue to dominate and become an integral part of our lives. If you were to stop for a moment and investigate who developed the very app you are now so dependent on, chances are it’s been developed in India.

In this episode, I talk to Sandeep Mahajan, who is based in India about what inspired him and 3 colleagues to quit their jobs with a leading software developing firm and start Impinge Solutions, now a rapidly expanding web solutions company.  Working  20 hours a day initially, the 4 young guns stuck out the initial challenges to turn Impinge Solutions into a lucrative, 85 manpower -strong software and web-solutions business.

He talks about how Indians have used their natural aptitude in maths and analytical skills to spearhead what is now the fastest growing IT development industry in the world.

Impinge Solutions offers a whole host of services including:

Consultancy

Graphics Designing Services

Software Development

- Desktop

- Web

- Mobile/PDA”s

Software Maintenance and Optimization

Hosting Services

Domain Expertise

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)

Customer Relation Management (CRM)

Supply Chain Management (SCM)

If Quality, Cost Effectiveness & Full Integration of your e – commerce platform is what your business is after, you’ll find this interview loaded with useful information.

Useful Links & references from this Podcast Episode 7

Impinge Solutions :

Skype and Yahoo ID: smahajan3675

Best way to Record Skype

M-Audio Fast Track Audio Interface

WordPress for your business website is one of the smartest decisions you’ll ever make for your online presence. Used by well over 200 million users on the web, WordPress is no longer just a blogging platform but a powerful CMS Content Management System allowing you to seamlessly integrate thousands of features with cool plugins and widgets.

Today, one can Install WordPress in 1 Click and have a powerful website up and running in no time. Whether your business has been running a website for the past decade or is about to launch one soon, you cannot ignore the versatility of WordPress.

In this episode, I explore some of the pros and cons of using WordPress, as an option for your business website confirming why this is a content managed system on steroids. Enjoy.

My Top 5 Favourite WordPress  Plugins of all time:

1. All In One SEO – Out-of-the-box SEO for your WordPress blog
2. Woopra – Real-time Analytics
3. Sociable - Automatically adds links on your posts, pages and RSS feed
4. Dynamic Content Gallery –  Creates a dynamic gallery of images
5. Google Anayticator – Google Anayltics code made simple for integration

Other Links referred to in the podcast:

MySQL , PHP , Filezilla, SM58, Zoom H2

Photo Credit

John Kotter is the undisputed guru in Leadership and Change Management and author of the bestselling book, “Our Iceberg Is Melting”. In this episode, I discuss Professor John Kotter’s 8 Steps of Change and how you can apply the same approach to successfully change your business under any conditions.

Entrepreneurs and business leaders ought to take valuable lessons from the authoritative subject matter expert on Change Management and Leadership. The 8 Steps of Change are based on Kotter’s extensive research spanning several decades, where he studied the science and art of successful and sustainable business change. If you are serious about turning your business around, there is a tried and trusted way, the John Kotter way.

Gallery Photo Credit

Pareto’s Principle is a fundamental business principle that holds true, irrespective of the nature of your business. Also known as the 80:20 rule, it is a simple, yet powerful approach to look at your business and more importantly focus on the issues that really matter.

So which one of these statements ring true for your business?

1.            80% of your business comes from 20% of your customers

2.            20% of your product or service range contributes 80% of your profit

3.            80% of customer complaints originate from 20% of the causes.

4.            20% of your individual effort and time achieves 80% of the desired results

5.            80% of your business productivity losses results from 20% of the causes

6.            20% of your staff is responsible for 80% of the business outputs and results.

7.            80% of the value in the business is generated by 20% of the processes

Look at your business long and hard and identify those vital few elements which are all that matter, everything else is hot air.

Image: healingdream / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Websites like YouTube and Vimeo have made video searching an appealing option for many consumers.  If pictures say a thousand words, imagine what HD video and pristine audio will do for your product or service proposition. The relatively low entry level has opened up a whole new channel to promote businesses online. In this podcast episode, I talk about the sublime Kodak Zi8 Pocket Digital HD Camcorder, a gadget to help your business videos come to life.

Producing HD Videos for your business website is now easier and more affordable than ever before. We look at the Zi8 for all its features and functionality. If your business is waiting to be discovered, the Kodak Zi8 will make the process of making professional looking videos a whole lot easier.

The SmallBizKaizen Store

The Notting Hill Carnival was the setting for our Business Lesson of the day. The West London spectacle, the biggest street carnival in Europe, lived up to its reputation of being a festive celebration of colours, music and of course food.  I was there on a glorious Bank Holiday Monday and in part, out on a fun mission to spot something worth sharing with the SmallBizKaizen community. I didn’t have to search far as you’ll see from this video.

This lesson holds true at the Carnival, then surely the same is true in your business. We urge all upcoming or newly established entrepreneurs to take heed of this simple lesson by getting into business for the right reasons, to solve a problem for your customers rather than create one for yourself !

On another business note, I also met up with Levi Roots of the Dragons Den fame at his “Rasta’Rant”, a true dragon slayer who is still putting music into your food today. His business story is simply phenomenal. We hope to bring you an exclusive interview with Levi in the future, so watch this space.  To be absolutely sure you don’t miss out, simply subscribe to the RSS feed.

An interview with Maggie João , an Executive and Life Coach accredited by the International Institute of Coaching and the Academy of Executive Coaching. She heads the International Institute of Coaching in Portugal. She is also a writer.

Before running her own coaching practice, her business background consisted of ten successful years in Manufacturing and Supply Chain with various global organisations within the auto, food and services sector. She has travelled the world and lived in 12 countries.

With clients in three continents, Maggie practises non-directive and non-judgmental coaching in English, Portuguese and Spanish.

This insightful interview starts with Maggie’s transitional journey into the practice of Executive and Life coaching and covers what it takes to be an executive and life coach, competencies and skills required, how to avoid common mistakes in life coaching & the coaching opportunity in leadership for entrepreneurs. There’s no doubt that in business, life coaching is a solid option in embarking on a journey of self-discovery – so why not let your dreams inspire you?

Visit the website at www.coachinglife.eu

The full article, “The Manager Coach”, as referenced in the interview & written by Maggie João.

A is for Action Plan, without this, everything you say in those meetings is just hot air.

B is for Best Practice, a technique, process or activity in your business known to bring the most effective solution or outcome than any other applied in a similar situation.

C is for Coaching, being a mentor to someone and taking them on a personal journey in self-fulfilment and discovery

D is for DMAIC a well-documented problem solving technique based on six-sigma principles and 5 specific: Define, Measure, Analyse, Improve and control.

E is for Efficiency is a doing things in the most economical way, and if those things are the right things to be done then this becomes a measure of effectiveness.

F is for FMEA, Failure Mode & Effects Analysis, a fancy term for a tool, typically used in new product development, to identify potential failure modes based on past experience with similar products or processes.

G is for Gantt Chart, the project scheduling tool of choice for managing improvement projects, milestones and responsibilities.

H is for Histogram, also known as skyscraper diagram, or bar chart. It’s a series of data plotted on a bar chart representing frequency or quantity against different intervals.

I is for the Inspiration to Improve – the heart and soul of Continuous Improvement

J is for the Japanese pioneers in Continuous Improvement, Sakichi Toyoda and Ishikawa amongst them, who at the heart of the Japanese industrial revolution were instrumental in embracing the principles of continuous improvement.

K is for Kaizen, the Japanese word that simply means “Change for the Better”. So now you know where we get our name SmallBizKaizen from!

L is for Learning, a continuous need to “sharpen the saw” to ensure your knowledge thirst is never quenched.

M is for Motivation necessary to support improvement efforts. Top Management plays a vital role in motivating everyone in Kaizen.

N is for Novel Ideas, typically the birth of most Continuous Improvement successes.

O is for Opportunity, any gap between a customer expectation and what your business currently delivers. This is the very source of Continuous Improvement

P is for Problem Solving, a discipline and approach to remove obstacles and barriers preventing your organisation from fulfilling customer obligations and expectations.

Q is for Quality as defined in the eyes of the customers. Are your products and services fit for purpose?

R is for Reward and Recognition an essential part of the CI loop. Recognise the stars and the players in your team and always celebrate successes.

S is for Sustainability – The art of ensuring your hard earned improvements don’t slip back to old habits.

T is for Tracking the impact of Actions to check whether the CI has been delivered.

U is for Upper Control Limit, the upper most control limit set in a Statistical Process Control chart to trigger corrective and preventive action.

V is for Value Addition – Efforts put into any product and/or service to improve attributes and is appreciated by your customers is deemed to have added value.

W is for Waste Elimination, basically any non-value adding activities along the value chain are considered to be Waste and ought to be eliminated.

X is a difficult letter to find a word beginning with it so we’ll settle for eXcellence in eXecution wich is the art of ruthless and flawless delivery of agreed objectives.

Y is for Yoke, part of Poka Yoke the Japanese word meaning “fool proofing”, designing a product in such a way it’s virtually impossible to make a mistake using the product.

Z is for Zero Defect, the quest for perfection in everything you and your organisation does.

Photo Credit

Tendayi Chiro known simply as TC, is not your average Civil & Structural Engineer. A Jazz enthusiast, collector of priceless Zimbabwean Stone Sculpture, a Golfer, Family man, MBA graduate, Manchester United die hard fan and above all, a seasoned entrepreneur of note.

Born in Zimbabwe and having studied engineering in the USA, TC has been involved in farming, restaurant and jazz club, student accommodation letting & other property related businesses in South Africa where he now lives.

In this insightful interview, TC takes us on his journey and shares how his approach to business ventures has been centred on a model of building value around property as opposed to the business proposition, quite akin to the MacDonalds Real Estate Model.

He gives valuable lessons in business about self belief, learning from mistakes and how the non-linear relationship in business requires an open and diverse mind to survive in today’s tough economy.

This podcast is laced with useful lessons and good advice for the smallbizkaizen listeners to take on board so we hope you enjoy it.

To ensure you never miss out on future episodes, subscribe to iTunes to have the podcasts automatically downloaded to your iTunes library, iPhone or iPod Touch. Alternatively, subscribe to the RSS by clicking on the link to the right of this post and select any of the options including email delivery whenever there is a new episode.

Article first published as Sack the Agency and Be Your Own Web Designer on Technorati.

Planning a website design for your business can be one of the most strategic tasks in bringing your business online yet if you don’t know where to start, this can be a daunting, costly and time consuming  exercise. Fortunately, there are now available a number of free online website design tools to help put your website project ideas onto a framework that you can share with your colleagues or web designers. Website mock ups now make the task of designing a simple website user interface quick, creative and fun.  As an online web design tool, we recommend you try out a free version of Mockingbird, an online tool that makes it easy for you to create, link together, preview, and share mockups of your website or application.

Being an online tool, one needs to create a user account that allows you to save your projects and access them from any PC using an internet connection. This also makes it possible to share your designs easily. Designs can also be exported as pdf files for sending via email or for printing.

This website mock-up tool features commonly used user interface elements such as text area, drop downs, tables, buttons , images , breadcrumbs , videos maps and so on, which are added to your design by simply dragging and dropping onto the workspace. You can then move, resize and add links to the various functions, preview and share designs by a simple click of a button.

For any small business going online with a website, we highly recommend “gomockingbird” as the ideal tool to save you loads of time, money and resources. You can sign up for a free account that will allow you 1 project with a limit of 10 pages free for working with up to 1 design – ideal for the smallbizkaizen entrepreneur.

We’ve put together a website Wireframe Tutorial Video you help you get started.  Go on, be your own web designer.

Photo Credit

Time is Cashflow

As an entrepreneur myself I understand the value of your time.  To help you make the most of your time and increase your productivity and efficiency you need to consider mobile smart phone technology as an essential part of your business arsenal. The decision to use a Smart phone for business is really a no brainer and at the pinnacle of smart phones, in my opinion is the iPhone. In this article we look at 5 iPhone Apps that will revolutionise the way you operate today and free up your time like never before, because at smallbizkaizen, we understand that time is cash.

Dragon Dictation  : Voice to Text transcriptions.

If you’ve ever written an email on an iPhone you’ll admit, it’s not the easiest task this fantastic gadget can do. It can be a bit challenging but hey, you can’t exactly have it all on an iPhone right? – Wrong ! Dragon Dictation is a really cool App that overcomes this problem with ease. You open the app, press the record button, speak clearly into the microphone and when you stop recording, your dictation is magically transformed into text that you can then copy and paste to send as an email, sms, twitter or Facebook message, saving you loads of time.

Dragon Dictation is brought to you by Nuance Communications

iTalk Recorder – On the Go Recording

Recording audio memos and voice reminders on the go is made extremely simple when you use the iTalk Recorder App from Griffin Technology. The ability to name each audio file gives this app the edge over most similar apps making file management & retrieval easy. Use this app to record meetings, presentations, interviews, random thoughts – in fact just about any sound media can be recorded for future playback in excellent quality. This app ideal for entrepreneurs on the go. Syncing the recorded audio files with your computer is made  possible via a free download available on http://www.italksync.com/download

iTalk Recorder is brought to you by Griffin Technology

Evernote : Remember Everything

It’s been described as an extension of your brain and true to their motto “Remember Everything”, Evernote allows you to do just that. This App allows you to take notes of virtually anything you want to remember for your business. With Evernote, you can create text, photo and video notes that you then auto synchronize to your Mac PC and Web – how cool is that? By tagging your notes, you create a fully searchable notes database so no excuses for forgetting stuff. The cool feature included with this app is the geo-location feature which allows for mapping and searching possibilities.

Evernote is brought to you by Evernote

WordPress : Mobile Blogging

Many business owners today are also bloggers and use the WordPress platform to easily publish , edit post and comments. WordPress mobile works with both wordpress.com and wordpress.org self-hosted blogs. As a mobile blogging application users can add text and photos straight from the iPhone camera.  You can carry out pretty much the same tasks as you normally would on your PC or Mac including posting new articles, editing existing posts and comments.

WordPress is brought to you by WordPress

HootSuite Lite for Twitter : Mobile Tweeter

This App allows you to keep in touch with the twitter-sphere and join the conversation from anywhere . Desribed as simple, elegant and powerful, HootSuite allows you to send and schedule Twitter and Facebook updates, track click stats, and set up tracking columns to monitor keywords, #hashtags and lists. What more do you need when you are on the go?

Hootsuite is brought to you by Hootsuite Media

Gallery Image Credit

Article first published as Why do Most Business Improvement Ideas Run Out of Gas? on Technorati.

10 ways to give your improvement ideas a realistic chance of success

Every day organisations worldwide identify millions of improvement opportunities worth billions of dollars in value to the business. Priorities are easy to agree, project teams are a breeze to assign whilst meetings become the default vehicle to deliver the promised potential.

As the weeks, emails, action plans, to do lists and Gantt charts go by, the number of opportunities that come to a natural dead end increases exponentially. Only a handful of the ideas are fit and resilient enough to make it anywhere near full potential. Ever wondered why those great ideas, including no-brainers never made it anywhere? Of the ones that make it through, how many remain sustainable?

We look at 10 things you can start doing differently to give your brilliant ideas any chance of making it past the brainstorm.

1. Have visible ownership and commitment from top management at all times to back the efforts. Without this sponsorship or vote of confidence, you’re push – starting a car uphill.

2. Define what success looks like in a manner that everyone involved in the project understands. Clearly articulate the potential value to be added in the eyes of the beneficiary (almost always the customer).

3. Agree and use measurable milestones at every stage of the project and most importantly at the “success” stage.

4. Agree mitigation triggers and escalation routes in the event that critical milestones have not been attained.

5. Assign only SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Timeous) Actions to each action owner and have the discipline to follow through every single action.

6. Think and act like an entrepreneur, not a project manager by approaching each of these opportunities as though it was a business on its own. If this opportunity was the only thing your business did, you’d find ways to make it succeed and remove all blockers and minimise the risks.

7. Assign clear roles and leadership to allow quick and effective decision making.

8. Use any setbacks as an incentive and motivation to succeed by quickly accepting and learning how you could do things better.

9. Document, showcase and archive all successful projects for future reference and build a best practice library of successes.
10. Track and trend the previously agreed success measures for as long as necessary until the ideas become business as usual.

Photo Credit

Read more: http://technorati.com/business/article/why-do-most-business-improvement-ideas/#ixzz0x8VzbcB5

Whenever I’ve come across an article or examples of where 5S principles have been applied, there’s almost always two images displayed depicting a “before” and “after” image of a typical section of an office, warehouse, factory or piece of a machinery. Invariably, the “before” picture shows a grimy, dirty state of affairs and the “after “ picture as if by some bit of magic shows the same item now cleaned and looking bright and shiny. This is NOT 5S!  The problem with this portrayal is it only demonstrates one aspect of the 5S – the cleaning.

Let’s start at the beginning. What is 5S? Very simply, this is a way of working (a methodology) used initially to organise workplaces to be more efficient and streamlined thereby consistently striving for more outputs, lower costs and less waste. So in essence, as this is what Continuous Improvement is mostly about, 5S is one of the commonly used Continuous Improvement tools.

5S is widely believed to have originated or least initially widely used in Japan and the term 5S is derived from 5 Japanese words-  seiri, seiton, seiso, seiketsu and shitsuke which loosely translated into English stand for: sort, simplify, shine, standardise and sustain.

The principle activities taking place at each of the stages are  :

Sort -  All unnecessary items, parts, files, supplies are removed from the area

Simplify – (or Set in Order) – A place is created for everything and everything is stored in its place

Shine – (Sweep) – Clean up the area

Standardise – Apply the same standard throughout (to other similar areas)

Sustain – Maintain the new standard and avoid slipping back to old habits

The recommended way to adopt and live 5S should be to approach it as a journey rather than a destination.  Once you reach the standardise stage, it can be quite easy for standards to slip back to old ways, hence the sustaining stage should go on for as long as necessary up until it has been embedded as part of a new culture.

At SmallBizKaizen , we have a few practical recommendations to make 5S a key part of your Continuous Improvement machinery, regardless of the type of business you are in.

1. Prioritise conducting 5S in workplaces where the efficiency improvement would benefit the business most, especially where there is a customer impact or interface. For example it’s more essential to do a 5S in the order processing office rather than the staff coffee making machine area.
2. Stating the overall intention and anticipated benefits will add weight to every 5S initiative. Consider linking it to some tangible benefit such as: By conducting 5S we aim to reduce our customer waiting time from the current 10 minutes to about 5 minutes.
3. Create a team building atmosphere and conduct 5S in teams rather than as individuals. This allows a common approach, making the standardisation stage more representative and giving it a greater chance to succeed.
4. There’s normally no need to go out of your way and spend loads of money on 5S. Basic discipline and common sense is mostly what is required.
5. 5S principles go beyond the office, consider using the 5S in today’s increasingly information technology driven environments for the efficient storage, protection retrieval and maintenance of data and files.

Watch the short video to see our tips on how you can apply 5S on your computer or hard disk drive as from today.

Lastly, if you’ve got a 5S success story to share, we’d love hear your it so do leave a comment or two.

Image used in the gallery :

Image: Salvatore Vuono / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

What’s in a business process flow?

So here’s s definition you’ve probably come across several times over:  - It’s a series of steps or actions that take place in your business to convert inputs into outputs.

In the SmallBizKaizen context, inputs are defined as your efforts i.e.  your money, labour, software, hardware, materials, phone calls,  emails, websites, consultants, packaging, electricity and so on. Outputs on the other hand are simply what your customers get at the end of the day which could be a product or service or both.

There are other terms used for process flow mapping that you may have come across including value stream mapping,  six sigma process mapping, process flow optimisation – it’s really all one and the same thing. Call it what you prefer as at Smallbizkaizen we don’t believe in BIG words and terminology but rather in the core principles and the concepts behind the decisions and actions we take.

In Kaizen, process flow mapping can be a powerful continuous improvement tool if used correctly, allowing your business to improve the value offered to your customers. It’s what we like to call a weapon of massive improvements.

There are several benefits to doing process flow map. We recommend you consider it for the following reasons and situations:

1. Does a process even exist for this? – You’ll be surprised how often, key processes within a business are not recognised as a process important to add value for your customers. A typical one I’ve come across is a lack of a process to allow and handle all customer feedback!
2. Is the process consistent? – This can also reveal many more surprises if you have people in your organisation who do similar tasks. You may find everyone has their own way of doing it, some more effective than others and so you only want to keep the best practices in your business.
3. Is the flow logical and optimised? The key here is optimised. You need to ensure every step of the process is not a duplicate, a waste or unnecessary. Additional questions to ask is are is this the right sequence, are we using the best technology available. How could we do it better?
4. Does it Add Value? This is can be a nasty little question if you challenge anyone in your business whether what they do adds value or not. The key point here is, these questions are not aimed at a person but rather at the process. You are optimising the process not the person most of the time anyway.)  We recommended you simply ask what your customers will benefit from each of the steps outlined in your process. If the answer is nothing, need we say more?
5. How can we improve the process? – The main reason why you want to do this is to identify improvements to the process. Once you have come up with a new streamlined and optimised process, put it to test immediately and monitor and measure the impact it has on your business.

So in typical Smallbizkaizen fashion, we give you practical tips on how to perform a process flow mapping exercise but do remember there are many ways to do this, so do what works best for you. This can be a great team building exercise so why not do it as team exercise or management team session ?

1. Keep it Simple – it’s a boring cliché but it’s so true.  Avoid mapping out very complex, long and winded processes as you’ll easily get lost and/ or side-tracked in the maze.
2. Start your mapping at a high level to give you an overall BIG picture of your business processes. From this high level picture, take each of the big steps in turn and map these out, one at a time.
3. Start by mapping the processes that add or are likely to add the most value for your customers.
4. Consider using a white-board (i love these)  as  there will be a lot of chopping and changing when you get to the optimising bit.
5. Describe the process in simple words.
6. Describe the objective of the process – a tip is to put yourself in the shoes of the customer (no matter what shoe size).
7. Define the level of process to be described, stick to it.
8. Define the boundaries:  starting / end point of the process.
9. Who is involved in the different steps?
10. Where are critical measure points?
11. Follow the flow of the process and draw up all the actions and decisions in their sequence. We recommend to use the SmallBizKaizen Action Plan template
12. Use  simple recognisable process flow symbols and arrows
13. You could try several different software available for mapping process flows such as Microsoft’s Visio,  Excel or PowerPoint also have great templates for process flow mapping. I personally use these with pleasing results as in the Microsoft Office 2010
14. Whatever you do, keep it real and do it for your customers.
15. Typical symbols are used are:

As always, we’d love to hear your comments and feedback on how you get on – Happy value stream mapping to you all !

Photo used in the gallery :

Image: luigi diamanti / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

a Small Business Podcast is born

SmallBizKaizen podcast has made a smashing debut on the iTunes Store with exactly, well one subscriber on day 1 ! Not bad for day one.  This is really exciting for us as it makes it so much easier for all listeners to subscribe freely to the podcast RSS feed by simply clicking the subscribe button in i Tunes.

It’s really simple to find the listing, simply search for “SmallBizKaizen” or “Kaizen”  or “Brian Venge” in the search field and you’ll find a logo that looks similar to the one in this post. Hit the subscribe button (gently),  sit back and enjoy as every new episode gets automatically delivered straight to your ear buds.

Oh and one last thing, spread the love…

Action Plans are central to every Continuous Improvement effort as they provide clarity, visibility and a level of commitment and responsibility necessary to get things done. However, if not enough care and effort is put into compiling an Action Plan, this can seriously affect the quality of the output and dent any chances of your improvement idea ever taking off. Done correctly, the Action Plan can be an effective weapon of mass improvements.

It is entirely discretional when to use an Action Plan although typical uses include: management, project or team meetings, brain storming sessions, problem deep dive sessions, review sessions, idea generation sessions and so forth.

We have compiled a few Top Tips for crafting what we like to call a Power Action Plan. We also put together a blank template, and partially completed example to download and invite you to give the Power Action Plan a test drive.

1. Use the header fields as per our template but feel free to modify to what works well with your business. Delete any column headings you don’t use. Only use and keep the fields that are essential for you.
2. Where applicable, split your Action Plan into 2 sections, one for “Short Term” (to be done within the week in question) and another for “Long term” (more than a week required to complete the action). This will make it clear what needs to happen immediately.
3. Always address your intended audience as if they were not present when the action was assigned. This will ensure the correct context of the action is provided and help avoid the “What was this all about?” type of question further down the road.
4. Endeavour to send out the Action Plan as soon as possible, preferably on the day the Actions were assigned.
5. Start with the most important Actions, by using the pain vs. gain prioritisation technique. Actions with bigger impact and requiring lesser effort being the highest ranked.
6. Group related actions together and create different Action categories where you have a lot of actions.
7. If you use a meeting room, consider using a whiteboard demarcated as per the template. At the end of the meeting, simply take a digital photo of the completed whiteboard and email it to all assigned action owners. No double handling, no typing, no waste – typical Continuous Improvement!
8. Always start the actual action statement with a verb. A verb is called an “action word” for a reason! This makes it clear from the onset exactly what needs to be done.
9. Assign a unique number for each Action. This will make it so much easier during discussions. If you refer to Action X12, everyone immediately knows which one you’re talking about as opposed to explaining the action or reading it out – saves you a bit of time.

For a blank  template click here to  Download  the file

To see a mocked up example your Download  is here

We’d love to hear your comments and feedback on an this or other equally effective Action Plan formats.

If you’d like to find out more about Power Templates such as This Action Plan, please check out my Continuous Improvement Toolkit that is guaranteed to bring you great Business Improvement Results.

For even more detailed approaches to Continuous Improvement, you can check out my eBook “Continuous Improvement Manifesto – The Ultimate Guide To Business Value Creation” 

Image: Arvind Balaraman / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Is Your Business Improvement Ready ?

Whilst every business wants to improve performance month on month, year on year, the reality is not all businesses have the basics in place to allow continuous improvement to take place naturally. A lot of this boils down to basic essentials such as management commitment and the approach in embracing this way of doing business. In this video we look at a quick way check and assess how ready your business is to deliver change.  After watching the video, we recommend you download the “Action Sheet” to get your improvement journey on the road or back on it.

Your Download link .

Image: Gregory Szarkiewicz / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Kaizen Continuous Improvement

Principles is the subject of this very first episode of the SmallBizKaizen Podcast hosted by Brian Venge. The podcast is targeted at entrepreneurs and small business as an inspiration and motivation to adopt the Continuous Improvement principles as a central part of any business strategy. If your business is struggling to find ways to get out of the recession, or seeking to make improvements to drive growth and profits then this podcast is for you.  Brian has spent the last 20 years working for 4 multinational corporations, Nestle, Unilever, CMB & Vodafone in the fields  of quality management, change management , strategy deployment  and continuous improvement.He draws attention to a reality check by concluding that the secret to success in Continuous Improvement boils down to 3 factors: simplicity, principles and a good business sense.

As mentioned in the cast, if you want to learn more about podcasting, check out the Andy White website.

Image: Salvatore Vuono / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Take a listen and enjoy.