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The Complete Guide to Continuous Improvement for Your Business or Organization.

July 22, 2016 by  
Filed under Business, Money, Opinion, Weekly Columns

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(ThyBlackMan.com) No business or service provider can coast along without improving. If you don’t strive to make your business better and stay up to date, you will be overtaken by your competition. It’s important always to concentrate on development and growing your business. It’s essential so you don’t get left behind. Your customers or clients want to know you have your finger on the pulse. They want to know that you’re always trying to deliver a better experience for them. No business is ever perfect, and there is always room for improvement. But ensuring that this development happens can be difficult. Use this guide to make sure you’re hitting the right targets.

Have a Plan

If you want your organization to be continually improving, you need to plan for it. There are some ways it might grow on its own, but most things won’t happen without making them happen. When you launch a business, you need a business plan. It helps you know where you’re going and helps with gaining funding. It should set out your goals and how you’re going to achieve them. You need to outline these things so that your business has something to aim for. Without a plan, you could end up directionless. You could just coast along until things peter out or something goes wrong.BlackMan-BusinessMeeting-2016

Keep the Plan Updated

The plan shouldn’t be something you write once and then ignore forever. It should be updated all the time to keep up with the direction of your activities. Things might not always turn out as intended. So it’s important to consider your next move and adjust your plans. You should always know what’s coming next, or what you are hoping will come next. Ideally, you shouldn’t have one straightforward plan. You should have options to choose, depending on your circumstances. If something unexpected happens, you shouldn’t be floundering and wondering what to do next.

Consult Experts

You can’t always be expected to know what’s best for your organization. Sometimes the best thing to do is to consult industry experts. Many of them have decades of experience. They specialize in improving various aspects of businesses and organizations. It’s always best to seek out a service with in-depth knowledge of your industry. For example, a nursing home might look for help with outcome improvement strategies in healthcare. A company that focuses on healthcare services will always be best placed to do the job. You might use experts to perform audits and reviews. They can make recommendations for change.

Look for Feedback

As well as getting advice from experts, it’s essential to hear from your customers or clients. The people who buy your products or use your services are vital, and you need to keep them happy. You should take an active approach to receiving feedback from them in a number of ways. There are many ways you could solicit feedback. They range from sending out a survey after purchase to asking for reviews online. Feedback could include someone giving a simple numbered rating of your service. Or it could involve detailed responses about their experience. Any feedback you collect should help you to see how you can improve.

Another place to look for feedback is with your employees. Your staff is also essential to the successful running of your company. You need to treat them well if you want them to stay with you. Staff retainment and satisfaction are two areas where you should be working on improvement. Getting feedback from your employees can involve a number of different methods. Many companies are starting to use software to collect information from their workers. Some places use suggestion boxes. They allow people to submit anonymous comments for how the workplace can be improved.

Stay Up to Date

One of the ways that you could be overtaken by your competition is if you don’t stay up to date. You should be aiming to keep up with changes in the industry and what your customers want. Sometimes, you might have a customer base that doesn’t want things to change. However, this can mean that your pool of customers gets smaller and smaller. If you want to keep things traditional, you have to offer more modern options too. As well as developing more up to date products and services, you should keep up with new technologies and best practices. Your competitors are saving money and time by using new methods. If you don’t do the same, you could end up getting left behind.

Watch Your Competitors

Speaking of competitors, it’s a good idea to keep an eye on what they’re doing. While you shouldn’t be copying them exactly, you do want to see how they are making efforts to improve. You can learn a lot by watching how they do things. Don’t just look at those who are on the same level as you, but look at larger organizations too. You might not be able to afford to do what they do, but you can emulate them in a more affordable way. It’s important to be in touch with your industry so that you can stay on the same performance level as others.

Professional Development

Another way to make improvements among your staff is to offer opportunities for development. This gives you a stronger and more talented workforce. But it improves staff retention too. Employees who have opportunities to receive extra training and to advance in their job are more likely to stick around. It also helps you in your efforts to stay up to date with the latest practices and technology. Don’t leave all the professional development to your staff, however. You should also be trying to improve your skills and knowledge. You can do this by attending conferences, networking, going to trade shows, and more.

Look for Ways to Diversify

Many business or other organizations will start off with one product or service. Focusing on that first product or service can be a good strategy. However, it’s usually important to develop new things to offer. Diversifying your business doesn’t have to mean doing very different things. You should start by expanding into related products or services. For example, if you sell bags, your next step might be to branch off into selling belts. Or you might sell hats, scarves, or other accessories. However, it could also mean sourcing or creating new bags to sell. Perhaps your first product is a bag designed for tennis players. Your next might be a bag for baseball players.

Work on All Areas

It’s important to make sure that you don’t focus on trying to improve in only one area. Your whole company needs to be making continual improvements. If you neglect something, it could drag everything else down. You need to make an effort to better all aspects of your business. That should go from the working environment to customer service. You should look for ways to save money and speed up processes. You can also make your business more sustainable.

Review Success Rates

Of course, you need to know that the efforts you are making are successful. You can’t implement something meant to improve your business and then ignore it. You have to find ways to monitor and review and implemented changes to find out if they had the desired effect. How this happens will depend on what you are trying to change. For example, if you want to save money, it will mean monitoring the company’s finances to see if there is any difference. In some cases, you might have industry experts to perform audits or reviews. They can use their expert knowledge to see if something is working out.

Create a Team for Improvement

Ensuring that improvement for your business is ongoing can be tough. If you or another person is the only person in charge of it, it can be neglected. You might not have the time to come up with ideas and strategies to improve things. One of the best ways to address this is to have people appointed to manage everything. You could create a team of people whose responsibility it is to manage change in different areas. Outsourcing this responsibility is often a good option for smaller organizations. You may not have a large enough staff to do it in-house.

Keep Looking for Ways to Improve

The most important thing to do is to keep searching for techniques for improvement. Some of them might be small, while others are more significant. Even making just one tiny change to how you do things could help. You could improve efficiency, save money, or boost satisfaction. Look for recommendations on how you can make a difference to ensure your business grows. Reading articles by industry experts will help, and so will networking with others. Don’t stop searching for ideas to improve, but be selective about what you choose to do as well.

Making improvements to your company needs to be something you are always working on. Don’t let your business fall behind or your clients and customers will go elsewhere.

Staff Writer; Aaron Wright

 


Comments

One Response to “The Complete Guide to Continuous Improvement for Your Business or Organization.”
  1. Patsy says:

    Excellent article!

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