|
7 Tips for Growing Your Business You Do Not Want to Ignore:
Growing companies must always be ready for the next challenge. If you fail in meeting critical business challenges you will not grow. Challenges often require some type of breakthrough. But do not be misled. A business breakthrough does not have to...
Creative People - How to Handle A Bad Client
A client with a creative business called me one day and asked the following question. It's a question I get asked frequently, so rather than write an entire article, I decided just to tell you exactly what I told her.
Kirstin --
Do you have a...
Innovation Management – Capturing Ideas
All too often idea generation is a conscious process. Leaders will herd people into a room with a flip chart, conduct a “brainstorming” session and state a problem (without deeper analysis) and ask for ideas. However, this shows a fundamental...
The Cure for the Highway Hi-Fi Blues
The other morning I was driving to an appointment, inserting a
CD into the player, and I couldn't help smiling. I was thinking
about my father and his career as a mechanical design engineer
for RCA. After the war, he helped design the innards of...
The Key to High Productivity is Energy Management
One of the issues most often raised by my clients is better time management. People have tried prioritizing tasks, blocking out parts of their day for certain tasks, implementing new systems and getting better at delegation. While all of those...
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Systems for Simplicity: What any Business can learn from McDonald's
Open any book on the subject of building effective business systems and you are sure to find McDonald's used as a prime example. Now their food mightn't be to everyones' liking, but it has one outstanding characteristic: it is entirely predictable. And few could argue that they haven't been successful.
Consider this: in less than fifty years, McDonald's have built over 29,000 stores based on a very robust system. If you didn't like the Big Mac you had in Moscow, you can be sure you would equally dislike the Big Macs you might have in Madrid, Melbourne or Manila.
Of course, McDonalds have it easy. Their business has never been about their food - it has always been about their systems. It is the sameness of their food, rather than its originality, which is what their customers expect. So it is sameness that they deliver.
Which is hardly what most of us are looking to provide, is it? We are selling a product or a service - not a 'system'. Our creativity, our unique approach, our flexibility to customer needs - these are what we are selling. The McDonald's approach seems anathema.
The reality is that systems have a place in every business because, used properly, they can help us achieve something that every business wants: efficiency and happy customers.
Take your average plumber. He is selling his skills - certainly not a
system. The plumber loves to plumb - he hates administration. But we still expect him to return our calls, to keep appointments and to provide us with accurate invoices.
So the plumber has a choice. He can forget to return calls, turn up late and get increasingly bogged down in paperwork (both of which happen all too often). Or he can put in place a basic time management and bookkeeping system.
Either way he'll still be a good plumber, but the system will provide him with more, happier customers and greater peace-of-mind.
What your plumber can't systemise is the art of plumbing. His experience and his apparently innate ability to diagnose a problem: these can only be passed on properly over time. Becoming the plumbing equivalent of Ronald McDonald is unrealistic.
Somewhere between McDonald's and your plumber lie most other businesses. Systems have a place in every business - it is simply a matter of degree. But we need to make a conscious effort to identify those parts of our business that can be 'systemised'.
In the long run, we will be rewarded with a simpler business and happier customers.
© David Brewster, January 2002
About the Author
David Brewster runs 'Business Simplification' and writes, talks and coaches on reducing the complexity of business and achieving greater clarity and effectiveness
|
|
|
|
|
| Creativity - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia |
| Creativity (or creativeness) is a mental process involving the generation of ... Wallas considered creativity to be a legacy of the evolutionary process, ... |
| en.wikipedia.org |
|
| Creativity For Life |
| An exploration of creativity in everyday life, with articles, quotes, reviews and other creative resources to awaken creativity in daily life. |
| www.creativityforlife.com |
|
| AdCritic.com: Commercial Ads |
| FROM CREATIVITY: Emerging Directors, Unite In the time it took to write this, three new directors popped up. Here are twenty to get acquainted with. ... |
| www.adcritic.com |
|
| National Curriculum in Action - Creativity - |
| Ordering Creativity packs: print and video materials. This website gives practical ideas on how to promote pupils' creative thinking and behaviour. ... |
| www.ncaction.org.uk |
|
| Ten Steps for Boosting Your Creativity |
| Experiments performed by the JPB Creative Laboratory show that watching TV causes your ... a weekly report on creativity, ideas, innovation and invention ... |
| www.jpb.com |
|
| Category:Creativity Techniques - Mycoted |
| This is a general category of Creativity and Innovation Techniques, ... I like to think of these creativity techniques as tools in a toolbox in much the ... |
| www.mycoted.com |
|
| Creativity at Work: The interplay of business, art and science |
| A resource for training and development in creativity and innovation in organizations. Has a newsletter, and some articles and essays by 'Corporate ... |
| www.creativityatwork.com |
|
| Crayola Creativity Central |
| Crayola Creativity Central offers kids arts and crafts ideas for rainy day fun. We also have coloring books and pages, art and craft projects, games, ... |
| www.crayola.com |
|
| Pages tagged with "creativity" on del.icio.us |
| All items tagged creativity ??? view popular ... Perspective for Creative Leaders · save this. by aromay to creativity business management ... 1 hour ago ... |
| del.icio.us |
|
| Creativity Web - Resources for Creativity and Innovation |
| Creativity Web Home Page Resources for Creativity and Innovation ... The Creative Process · Multiple Intelligences · Idea Recording · Your Creative Space ... |
| members.optusnet.com.au |
|
| gapingvoid: "cartoons drawn on the back of business cards": how to ... |
| So you want to be more creative, in art, in business, whatever. ... Companies that squelch creativity can no longer compete with companies that champion ... |
| www.gapingvoid.com |
|
| Creativity Quotes | Creativity Quotations | Creativity Sayings ... |
| Quotes on Creativity - part of a larger collection of Wisdom Quotes to challenge and inspire. Find Creativity quotations and links to quotes on other ... |
| www.wisdomquotes.com |
|
| Ideas by Creativity Pool |
| A free database with new ideas and possible inventions. Add your own, or bring an existing idea to life. |
| www.creativitypool.com |
|
| CREATIVITY |
| Creative problem solving depends on using the right tools, tricks, ... Search for the latest books on Creativity (or anything else) in the Quantum Books ... |
| www.quantumbooks.com |
|
| Creativity Tools, Creative Solutions & Creative Problem Solving ... |
| This page explains a wide range of techniques which can help you generate creative solutions to your problems. |
| www.mindtools.com |
|
| The 6 Myths Of Creativity |
| A new study will change how you generate ideas and decide who's really creative in your company. |
| www.fastcompany.com |
|
| CreativeClass.org |
| Richard Florida's "The Rise of the Creative Class" examines creativity and its effects on economic development. |
| www.creativeclass.org |
|
| TIP: Concepts |
| The relationship between creativity and intelligence has been always been a central concern of psychology ( Guilford , 1950). Much effort has been devoted ... |
| tip.psychology.org |
|
| American Creativity Association (ACA) |
| An incorporated non-profit organization promoting personal and professional creativity. Association membership is represented by four multidisciplinary ... |
| www.amcreativityassoc.org |
|
| CREAX - Portal for creativity and innovation |
| A resource for links on creativity and innovation on the web. A selection of 690 links is divided into 67 categories for the visitors convenience. |
| www.creax.net |
|