Rip up the rule book for a profitable 2016

It's nearly 2016 and you want your business to expand more staff, more customers and more profits. However the last three years you have flat lined so how do you do it?

Get yourself a blank piece of paper and write your business plan as if you was just starting the business, this works if you own the business or you're a manager.

Write down the process and procedures in bullet form not in detail. Then list who does what and who your customer are then ask WHY.

Asking “Why?” all the time might be annoying from a child, but it can teach you a valuable Six Sigma quality lesson. The 5 Whys is a technique used to Analyse  Six Sigma DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analyse, Improve, Control) methodology. 

Repeatedly asking the question “Why” (five times), you can generally get  to the root cause of a problem, issue or even the answer your searching for. Very often it will lead you to another question. Although this technique is called “5 Whys,” you may find that you will need to ask the question fewer or more times than five before you find the answer.

Benefits of the 5 Whys

Help identify the root cause of a problem or a solution.

Determine the relationship between different root causes of a problem.

One of the simplest tools; easy to complete without statistical analysis.

How to Complete the 5 Whys

1. Write down the specific topic you need to answer. Writing it down helps you formalise  and describe it completely this can be done in a mind mapping format. It also helps you or a team team focus on the task.
2. Ask Why you do it that way or why an issue happens and write the answer down below the problem. BECAUSE WE'VE ALWAYS DONE IT THAT WAY. (i normally ask WHY when i get that answer, followed by plenty of errr's, mmmm's and then a blank face)
3. If the answer you wrote down doesn’t identify the root cause of the problem or the solution in Step 1, then ask Why again and write that answer down.
4. Go back to step 3 until you or the team is in agreement that the problem’s/ solution's root cause is identified. Again, this may take fewer or more times than five Whys.

Communication is key

To ask WHY you need to ask your employees, customers and suppliers several questions.

Employees.

Why do you work here? 

What can we do to improve?

What would you do to improve it?

Customers

Why do you use us?

What can we do to improve?

What would you do to improve it?

Yes ask your customers what you can do better and ask them how.

Suppliers

Remember you are a customer of your suppliers.

Ask them to evaluate you as a customer.

Ask them are they happy with you.

Ask them how you can improve.

Then define your answers. Where can you improve, where can you save and most of all where to expand.

Rip up the rule book for 2016 and re-write history.