Are you burning money? Years ago, in evaluating my cashflow, I recognized the benefit of cutting out that daily stop at a coffee shop. A $6.00 drink, seemingly a small out of pocket expense, became roughly $1,440 expense by the end of the year for just one person. How easily these little expenses in our lives can get out of control.
Does this resonate with you in your personal and business life?
When resources are scarce and need to be used efficiently, we pay much closer attention to where our funds are spent.
In your business, has wasteful spending, ineffective business workflow, or complex processes been put in place as a result of rapid growth? Predecessors in leadership or ownership have, out of necessity, adapted, applied, and created new concepts to address an existing problem, customer, or cashflow concern. Likely necessary at the point of decision, but now, these prior concepts are impeding the stability of your organization. The demand to conserve cash and streamline operations has forced change to address inefficiencies and wasteful spending. A change that you were previously swallowing, not liking, but now with loss or reduction of cashflow and resources with the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, these areas of waste have become painfully noticeable.
Here are some simple waste reduction opportunities to consider.
1. Check legacy agreements for high financial terms, long commitments and exit penalties
- Stop carrying the cost of your materials and inventory for too long. Notify legacy vendors of required changes in terms of any contract renewal
2. Have you empowered your people to streamline the internal business process?
- Enable your people to be creative and take initiative for positive change
3. Are there layers upon layers of business processes to go through for approvals?
- Reduce the business processes for efficiency
4. Do you need so many people in the review process?
- Remove non-essential approvals and set up a clearinghouse
5. Are your executive team time constraints a bottleneck?
- Reprioritize your executive team's workload
6. How long do your employees need to wait before escalating an issue?
- Create a workflow path for clarity in resolving priority issues
7. WFH personnel can now see the bottlenecks and waste of time in daily operations
- Solicit insight, capture suggestions, and especially pain points that impact the delivery of timely business
8. Productive people prefer efficiency and recognition for their effectiveness
- Create a productive response cycle for people to be motivated, measured by productivity, not time in a seat
This is the opportunity of a lifetime to take simple steps to reduce waste and create a simplified and streamlined process, adding value to your business.
Please respond with your suggestions and things that you are doing for your business and people.
P.S. Don't forget to look at your own coffee spend. You might be surprised.