KMX In Action - Lead Conversion

Combine KMx tools to create a powerful lead conversion system for services requiring a project proposal.

Custom forms offer several benefits for this process including custom field creation, automatic numbering, form linking, tag creation, and task assignments.

Create a template form to store client information such as company name, contacts, addresses, phone numbers, etc. Each form(client entry) is automatically numbered, assigning a unique ID number to each new client.

Create an additional template form to collect information regarding the request for services. Assign the new project to a client by creating a field to link to an existing client form. Create entry fields within the form to collect relevant data about the project. Entry fields can be text, numbers, currency, radio buttons, lists, dates, contacts, etc. This information can be indexed and retrieved for filtering and searching. Create fields assigning tasks required to complete the proposal.

When each request for services form is completed and saved it is assigned a unique number. Based on this number and the title used for the form a new tag is created for the project. Based on the assignment fields used within the form new tasks are created, tagged with the project name/number, and assigned to the relevant users.

These features can easily be used to track client conversion rates by client, job type, project manager, location, etc. The possibilities are virtually endless and the impact on system innovation is tremendous if the available process metrics are tracked .

Sharing Best Practices

Sharing information within your organization is crucial for innovation. Current technology offers many tools to facilitate this communication. Bill Ives submitted an interesting article regarding the successful implementation of wikis at Océ to share information and improve processes.

Wikis are a suitable tool for collecting information on current practices and making the information accessible. More structure is required, however, to fully integrate this information into company policy. Specifically, there needs to be a formal process in place to ensure that the information being disseminated is in accordance with company objectives.

For more detail regarding the benefits of KM Executive Documents vs. a wiki refer to the article Why Not a Wiki?

Tracking Long Term Objectives

Maintaining consistency with innovation in your company can be one of the most difficult habits to develop. It's just hard to focus on long-term 'important/not urgent' activities when you are constantly barraged with the 'urgent' activities of day to day business.

There is a specific feature built in to KMX that can be used to provide assistance in this regard and make sure that strategic objectives don't take a back seat.

I use this functionality to make sure I don't let long term objectives fall through the cracks in the following way:

1. I have created a set of activities that identify long term objectives for business development.
2. These activities can be assigned to me, or to anyone else in the company that needs to be working on them. Either way I assign myself as a 'watcher'. What this does is bring the activity onto my dashboard under the 'My Watched Activity' section. This section is arranged so that the newest items, or items that are updated, are floated to the top of the list. Thus, the last item on the list is the activity that has not had any action for the longest time.
3. At periodic intervals I concentrate on working from my watched activity list, starting at the bottom and working up.
4. For each item on the list that identifies a long term objective for business development I do some action to move it forward. By adding a comment or time entry to the activity it bumps up to the start of my watched activity list. The comments allow me to pick up where I left off the next time I get a chance to work on the activity.

The best part of this functionality is that tasks associated with long term objectives are within the same framework as the day to day work activities so I don't have to maintain a completely separate system for tracking each type of task.

Benefits of Sofware as a Service Model

The primary benefit to companies that implement a Software as a Service (SaaS) model is the savings in up front costs. You eliminate the mechanical costs of implementation involved with upgrading hardware and operating systems and installing software. Not to mention consulting time and fees associated with installation problems and conflicts. You dramatically decrease the deployment time.

Long term you eliminate the time required to update databases and maintain harware and operating systems. Your users focus on the functionality of the solution and the developers focus on it's operation.

When you implement an SaaS solution you are leveraging the expertise of the software developers and creating a balance between that expertise and the expertise of your company.

SaaS adds the benefit of regular feature upgrades. System changes can occur instantaneously, which cannot be accomplished with on-site deployment.

KM Executive recognizes the dramatic benefits of the SaaS delivery method as opposed to standard on-site installation. Take advantage of the benefits your company can experience today - start exploring with a free, no obligation, KMX account.

Process Leadership

My first introduction to the term Process Leadership came from Victor Newman in his article Introducing Process Leadership: The First Leadership Discipline . This is the most concise explanation I have discovered that explains the importance of creating a systematized approach to business.

Communicating system information is likely the most obvious key success factor for an effective process leader. However, the process used to create and document the systems and keep them relevant and fresh in your business culture is also critical for any long term success.

A company may have excellent systems and be directed by an effective process leader, but if it all centers around 'hands-on' training success will be limited. If implementing systems relies ONLY on person to person interaction the growth and improvement of your company will be limited by the number of people that are qualified to disseminate information and the amount of time those people have to train others.

Systems must seamlessly integrate into daily activities and the company culture and allow immediate feedback/response from the system operators.

KM Executive has provided a solution by creating a set of tools that collect and distribute critical operational information. These tools work within a framework built around company operational documents. Users enter time, communicate with other team members, and manage projects and tasks - essentially documenting all daily activities - with operational documents guiding how activities are performed. By reviewing critical data related to a particular guided process the effectiveness of the process can be evaluated and the system revised to accomplish the intended results.

Km Executive is a vital tool for process leaders.

Accountability Part I

In his most recent commentary about a presentation by Patrick Lencioni, Jack Vinson identifies avoidance of accountability as one of Lencioni's 5 dysfunctions of a team. I find that accountability is one of those frequently used business buzz words that can have many different meanings depending on the context.

Accountability is the cornerstone of Km Executive and can be explained by a three-fold definition. Primarily, employees in any organization must abide by company policies and regulations first and foremost. Second, employees must be accountable for the results they are expected to achieve. This includes accomplishing the results within the required schedule and budget constraints. Third, the results must be achieved in the systematic manner defined by the company so that the process fits into the larger, company-wide picture.

Quantifying accountability on all three levels is the most difficult task that companies face because it requires a simultaneous view of many pieces of disparate information. Most often this data is difficult to collect and is only relevant from a backward viewpoint. A manager must have distinct parameters defined for successful outcomes and then be able to analyze the unsuccessful outcomes and determine where the process failed.

Km Executive provides the tools for this analysis. We will discuss how these tools can be applied in future articles.

Why Now is the Time to Innovate...your Business

I've read several blog posts over the last several months discussing the importance of investing in R&D and innovative products during this recession. The May 2009 Oracle newsletter discusses the importance of investing, specifically in SOA. Anne Mulcahy, CEO of Xerox also shared some of her insight on the importance of investing in a downturn. I ran across countless other articles and blogs discussing the importance of innovation in rough economic times, most all of which focused on investing in products and marketing. I have to agree with the vast majority of these sentiments - working while others sleep is a great way to get ahead.

One point that seemed to be regularly glossed over, however, was the importance of innovating business processes, procedures and systems - innovating businesses themselves. Let's face it, although all businesses are either directly or indirectly affected by technological advancement, product innovation, and evolving marketing tactics those facets of business do not alone dictate success. How we do business - our efficiency - our approaches - these aspects of our businesses separate the survivors from the extinct and the titans from the proles.

Two things happen during a severe economic downturn such as the US is currently experiencing: (1) businesses of all sizes cut back spending; and (2) consumers shop around for the best products for the best prices. As it happens, both of these tendencies foster a perfect environment for business innovation.

When businesses cut back on spending, the areas that gets hacked early on are wages and salaries - individuals get laid off, companies shrink their workforces. Obviously there is an unfortunate reality associated with these decisions, but there's also a silver lining for innovation-minded organizations. With fewer employees, the ability to innovate, implement and improve procedures and business systems is greatly increased. A smaller work force implies more opportunities to be dynamic. Now is the time to really focus on tweaking processes that didn't scale well when business was booming, get rid of processes and positions that were easily merged and replaced during downsizing, and develop new processes to help processes scale again when the economy picks back up.

When consumers begin paying real attention to the products and services that they need and considering their ROI, they become smarter consumers out of necessity. Such conditions reward those companies that are spending time figuring out how to offer their products with superior quality and delivery. Clients and customers become more willing to provide praise or criticism to companies that exceed their expectations or push the wrong buttons respectively. Taking the time to listen to consumers, identify problem areas and exceptional areas will pay dividends.

The point? - Smaller workforces and more demanding consumers today, are providing organizations with the opportunity to take advantage of an environment that will foster innovation and increase the likelihood of emerging from this recession a stronger, more stable company. Business leaders that recognize this and push for improvement now will reap the rewards when the money begins circulating again.

Ouch, Working for Free is Expensive

It would sure be nice if the laws of physics held for economics, but unfortunately we do not always get out of a project what we put in. Everyone business must face off against non-payment, late accounts and collection now and then. For small consulting companies and professionals, this is a pretty trivial task since the number of project managers and stakeholders lends itself to everyone being aware when work needs to be stopped on a project. As the number of employees and managers increases, though, the risk of not communicating stopped job status to all team members increases as well.

For purposes of illustration, consider an e-commerce web site project assigned to several teams each working on different aspects of the assignment. One team focuses on developing copy text, another developing search engine marketing, another performing graphic design and yet another developing the application logic behind the site. This project is but one of several that each team is working on simultaneously.

Each team is doing well and plugging along with each of their projects. In the meantime, the bill for the last deliverable on the e-commerce project goes past due. In this scenario, it is usually best to contact the client immediately to gauge their intentions - are they going to pay? Are they satisfied with the work? (I talked about some of the benefits of regular communication with clients in my last blog.) If it doesn't look like payment is on its way, it's a good idea to stop investing time into the project immediately, especially given the current state of the economy.

In the event that work needs to be stopped, the stop must be communicated to every individual across every team, beginning with the accounting department. With many tasks already assigned to various individuals across man teams and some tasks possibly subcontract to third party firms, ensuring that everyone is aware of the work stop may be difficult depending on the level of organization and communication within and between the project teams in addition to accounting. If work does continue, especially in the case of third party contractors, the project loss can get big quickly.

One approach to ensuring that project status is well communicated to all team members is holding regular project meetings to discuss status and details. One drawback is that it may not always be practical to arrange these types of meetings with busy schedules - another is that any team member not present may not get the information at all. Another approach is to integrate time tracking with project management such that all tasks to which time is attributable can easily be put on hold, thus eliminating the possibility of performing work. This, of course, relies on good time tracking practices in the first place.

The bottom line is that if a clear and consistent method of documenting and communicating project status to all team members is not in place, you can end up doing a lot of work that you never get paid for.

Litigation Mitigation, Communication Implementation and other non-rhyming business necessities

I grew up in a world where a handshake constituted a binding contract that need never be enforced in a court of law and where a person's word was more important than money. I can't say that I see those principles much today for a couple of reasons. Firstly, there are a lot more people today and therefore a lot more liars, a lot more looters and moochers, and a greater need to protect the interests of the rest. Secondly, our lives and our world are immeasurably more complex than they were fifty years ago.

The bottom line is that contracts and "litigation mitigation" pervade our business lives these days because law suits spring up every day over disagreements concerning copyrights, patents, real estate transactions, ownership, contract performance, liability, employment and for hundreds of other reasons. Employers have every right to be concerned and devote their attention to preventing lawsuits - just one bad lawsuit can destroy a company's future and ruin lives.

Good documentation and consistent practices are the cornerstones of a good defense against frivolous or wrongful lawsuits (avoiding legal action with employees, OSHA protection, minimizig litigation risks). In the absence of good documentation, litigation relies on testimony, i.e., words against words against recollections against fabrications. I'll provide an illustration by example of a client I recently worked with.

A client I consult with was recently involved in a wrongful lawsuit for contractual non-performance (which was actually a counter-suit against a suit by my client for non-payment for services rendered). My client "Joe" had provided services on a particular project over the course of several months and had billed out against that job regularly and communicated status regularly via phone. During each payment follow up communication between Joe and his client Joe's client indicated that they just hadn't gotten to it, but would be sending payment soon. Finally, after nearly a year of attempting to collect payment from Joe's client, Joe finally broke down and filed suit for payment.

To Joe's surprise, he was slapped with a counter suit from his client alleging that his performance under their contract was not acceptable and caused the client monetary damages. Unfortunately for Joe, although he and his staff had regularly communicated status to the client and had been told by the client on multiple occasions that they would be paid and that the work was excellent, there was no documentation to support it. Joe's insurance company settled and Joe actually lost his contract proceeds, the time and efforts of his staff and experienced increased insurance premiums as a result of the settlement. What went wrong?

What went wrong was that Joe was unable to provide enough evidence to establish that there was regular communication of project status to his client throughout the project lifetime. The client was able to claim that they were unaware of the project's progression and that they had no chance to object to the work being completed as it was completed.

This is one clear cut case where some consistent knowledge management practices would have gone a long way. If, for instance, a regular schedule of client contact was in place company-wide it would have been easier to establish that it was likely that the client received regular communication since all Joe's clients receive regular communication. Second, if each communication was well documented complete with subject matter, Joe would have had a much better chance at convincing a judge that the client was apprised of project status with no disapproval.

The short and skinny: two great ways to avoid litigation are to be consistent with client communication and to make sure that all client communication is well documented. The first alone will often lead to better client relationships and reduced chance of misunderstandings or dissatisfied clients. The second does a great job of CYOA in the instances where the first just isn't enough.

Inventory Your Company's Knowledge

After the beginning of my company's knowledge management awakening the exhilaration of thinking there was hope for the jumble of existing business processes faded and I was left facing the reality of the situation. Where do we start? There seemed to be so many possible directions to go and so many things that seemed to need help. Where there people or tools out there to help?

At this point we had used the services of one international 'business consultant expert'. All we were left with was an empty wallet and a notebook full of documents that went right on the shelf. This experience led me to believe that the problem was not limited to defining what was bad - we new that well enough through our daily activities. The problem was implementing change that was going to lead to improvement.

Our first step was to focus on one department and set of processes. We assembled a group to start brainstorming to breakdown the department functions into a list of specific skills or processes. Each item on the list was given a priority based on it's current state and it's importance to the overall functioning of the department. This list allowed us to evaluate where we really stood in terms on knowledge management and helped us to see how much of our daily activities were not formally defined.

Out next challenge was to figure out a systematic approach to formally defining all of the highest priority items so they could be evaluated and improved.

Working for the Weekend (Falling off of the Work-a-holic Wagon...and getting away with it)

I've been accused of being a work-a-holic more than once in my lifetime, more so after getting married. It may be true, but the simple fact is, I like to accomplish stuff. I enjoy the feeling of looking back at a day and being able to quantify the "value" that I've added to the world during that time. It's almost a high sometimes. That's not to say that I don't love to completely vegetate to the Nth viewing of Hot Fuzz or crack open Atlas Shrugged again once in awhile.

Over time I've had to find a balance between family and work, which has left me facing the problem of accomplishing the same amount of work in less time. I can't say that I've completely accomplished that - I definitely work less now than I did five years ago. I have, however, learned a few tricks to cheat and still get a lot of work done: (1) identify "opportunity" time, (2) identify tasks that can be deferred to the weekend, (3) estimate required time / effort, and (4) schedule my weekend activities. Using this approach, I'm able to consistently put in 6 - 8 hours of productive work time on a weekend without stealing anything from my family time.

1. The bulk of the cheat is finding the "opportunity time", or time during the weekend when no one will miss me. This is like sneaking off to the back room at the in-law's Thanksgiving to catch a bit of the big game while Wifey and Mom talk about how the stuffing would have been so much better if Dad would have laid off of the onion. I found my opportunity time between around 4:30 am and 7:30 am, which is roughly when both my wife and children are still sleeping. 4:30 am might sound bad to some, but for a work-a-holic, delirium tremens sets in after a few hours of work deprivation and waking up is easy. I've also found a second block of time between 9pm to 11pm which is after the kids are sleeping and my wife is drained from taking care of the kids and house all day and decides to knock off as well (but more often than not I choose to watch the Outer Limits or play Rock Band during that time).
   
2. Now that I know when I can get away with cheating, I regularly identify tasks that I can defer to the weekend with confidence of being able to complete them. Generally these are things that aren't due until the following week sometime (not necessarily Monday). I *almost never* select tasks that are actually due Monday morning or Friday evenings, etc. just on the off chance that something comes up that prevents me from actually taking advantage of my opportunity time (like the kids waking up way too early and piling in my study just to watch me type - which really means going through my drawers and pushing power buttons on miscellaneous network and server equipment).
3. With a complete list of all of the weekend possibilities in hand, I estimate the amount of time needed to complete each activity and select a grouping of tasks that can be completed in my available time. This really isn't that difficult because I am a time management nut. I compulsively log and document my time (even when I'm not working) using a task management and time logging tool. So, for instance, not only do I know how long it takes to provision a web server from scratch nearly to the minute, but I also know that I take 4 bathroom breaks, 2 water breaks and check my email twice in a four hour time span and exactly how much time those things take me. I'll admit that I take the whole time logging thing a bit far - friends come over to chat and I have them wait for a moment while I "clock out" of whatever I'm doing and "clock in" to "chatting with a friend". My wife hates it when she comes in to give me a kiss in the morning and I clock out first then clock in to "kiss my beautiful wife".
4. Finally, I prioritize and schedule my weekend activities during my opportunity time. I pick the items whose completion will benefit me the most during the coming week and that I can button up completely during the weekend. I used to keep a written list, but that made it difficult to continue to document the time and details of my efforts which led to poor estimation. I now (as crazy as it seems) manage all of my tasks with task management software so that I can take advantage of the learning from each activity to better estimate and schedule future activities.

The end result of all of this is that, by employing a little bit of knowledge management, I get to spend family time with familiy and still get to spend some time off of the wagon indulging in my work-a-holic vices.

Back to the Future

They seem goofy these days, but I really enjoyed the action and sci-fi movies of the eighties. One franchise, in particular, really captured my imagination and started my wheels a-turning: Back to the Future. It wasn't just the screen play, God love ol' Doc Brown, it was the paradox of time travel. While Marty McFly fades into the ether strumming out "Earth Angel" I wondered, "Why is he gradually disappearing? He's either got to *pop* away or stay solid - he can't be *half* born if his parents never get together.

It's funny how so many businesses seem to defy the laws of physics with similar paradoxes. How do businesses stay afloat when they're only *half* running their business? Let's talk about an often neglected component of doing business: project budgets.

A good budget is an *educated* guess on the quantity of a resource that will be required in order to produce some desired result. Being able to properly quantify the energy necessitated by a project, put a profit on top, and pass it along to a client is essential to maintaining a good looking bottom line. The key to that guesswork is the "educated" component - but where does that come from? That's where we take a step back and realize that each job we do, every task we complete isn't just an isolated activity or just for one job or another, but instead is a learning tool and a building block, developing more accurate budgets across the board. Sounds like a job for knowledge management.

I was once oblivious to the power of budgeting and even more so to the idea of managing my company knowledge to improve estimation. When I began a small web design firm awhile back, our process for submitting proposals to clients consisted of nothing more than guesswork really. We looked at other design firms and what they were charging for "boiler plate" projects and used that as a starting point, which really isn't that bad of an idea for getting going initially. As expected, our actual time investment didn't directly correspond to our fees. Sometimes we made great profits, sometimes we lost big, sometimes we broke even. In an ad-hoc manner, we started looking back at past contracts to identify similar projects and started copying our own pricing from previous projects for new projects. This helped us zone in somewhat, but what it failed to tell us was how and why we actually performed (or didn't) per project - we just had an idea of "we lost" or "we profited".

It wasn't until Pete and I began developing our own knowledge management tool (KMx) that my firm was really able to take control of the budget process. Really, it isn't that complex with the right tools, but it does require some discipline. I've found that combining time tracking, task management, and some simple budget tracking features I can pin-point *exactly where* a particular budget suffered or performed and use that information to develop a more accurate budget next time.

The key for us was to develop a systematic approach to the proposal process that now goes something like this:

1. Gather all of the project requirements. This is an important step, because every requirement translates into some activity that requires some finite amount of time, and therefore money, to complete. If one doesn't identify it before the proposal, they run the risk of not charging for it or worse yet, not doing it and having the client think that they are going to.
   
2. Create a detailed task tree indicating how much time each step should take. Taking this approach definitely increases the amount of time and effort required to put out a proposal. It may sound risky since it may be time lost if a project isn't landed, but it's a good investment - that time can be added into the proposal itself. In order to really do a good job at this, it's almost necessary to perform a simulated run on the project, i.e., pretend as if the project has already been landed and line it out for the project team to start work on.
3. Double check the task tree against previous projects' trees. This will make more sense after running through the whole process, but essentially, we've been tracking tasks, time and budget performance for all of our projects and now have a complete history of every task that we performed well (or poorly) on, project comments, and lessons learned. We use that information to tweak our trees and hours to ensure that we don't repeat the same mistakes.
   
4. Create a set of budget items based on deliverables or milestones. Total up the monetized time involved to complete each milestone based on the task tree and billing rates. Now we have the most accurate budget we can achieve for the client.
5. When the project is accepted, we can schedule quickly and get started quickly because we've already got all of our tasks detailed out complete with the time / resources required. It's simple from here. Now every member of the team simply logs their time as they perform work on their tasks and note specifically what was done during that time (this is made pretty simple using the timer tool). We check our logged hours against our budgeted hours regularly, and note the cause of any underages or overages.

What we end up with after this is an powerful way to gain introspective on how we work and how that work relates to what we bill. Every proposal we put out is based on a budget developed systematically to be the best based on everything we've learned in the past.

Sure enough, a little knowledge management makes a big difference in staying profitable.

The beginning - Discovering the need for Knowledge Management

I think of Knowledge Management as simply a term that describes the processes I use to examine and control the connections between the information my company creates and uses to operate. Knowledge Management happens every day in every business. Some businesses are very formal about it with documented processes and procedures. Others are very informal with all procedure and process information being communicated verbally.

My first business managed knowledge primarily on an informal basis for the first decade or so of it's existence. The only documented information was the information generated by completing projects. This information was stored in hard copy or digital folders by project. Rudimentary cross reference information was maintained that grouped projects by location and client. Functional duties were shared as each situation dictated and specific position responsibilities were only loosley defined.

This operation was successful as long as there were only a handful of employees. Production could be monitored by the principal to ensure quality. Training occurred only as result of being shown how to do a certain task enough times to ingrain the requirements.

As the company began to grow, the most apparent problem was clearly the lack of a systematic training process. Technicians were shown how to do something once, or a couple of times, and expected to know how to do it next time it came up. If they did not remember how to do the task they would ask someone else. The person showing them may not fully understand the process themselves so a 'propagation of misinformation' began to happen. Without the principal(s) being involved with every step of a process it was not done to the company's standards.

This was the first time we truly recognized the need for some sort of knowledge management. In this partiular case that meant we needed to create a training process that produced documented, application specific, reference material that could be easily located when it was needed.

Out next step was to take inventory of our company knowledge and determine how much of it was formally defined and how much was retained in the heads of the employees.

Managing Knowledge

Whether it’s raising money for the community, selling flowers, or building cars every business or organization has a mission that must be carried out in the most efficient way possible. The ability to carry out this mission consistently over time is directly governed by your ability to manage knowledge. Carrying out this mission requires aligning the day to day activities of workers with the mission, which requires providing timely and relevant information for workers and making it easy to institute change.

The hub through which this is carried out is your company knowledge base. There is a wide spectrum of models for how companies operate their knowledge base. On one end are the companies that have no formal knowledge base at all aside from the records generated from the work they perform such as customer and job files, invoices, etc. Information is held within the experience of the workers. Roles and responsibilities are not clearly defined. These companies are hit the hardest by the loss of their ‘corporate memory’ when someone leaves and are very slow to grow because they must find people that already have experience or hire people that must learn by doing and watching – which takes a great deal of time.

On the other end of the spectrum are companies that have developed methods to store, catalog, cross-reference, and retrieve company knowledge on demand. These companies capture and document the worker’s experiences and expertise. Change comes naturally as outdated information is updated in real time. Employee lead to new or updated procedures for operation. Corporate memory is not lost as employees come and go because their expertise has been captured in the knowledge base for a replacement to pick up on. Roles and responsibilities are clearly defined. Training time for new employees is drastically reduced due to the fact that the training materials are a direct product of the knowledge base. Further, efficiency and productivity are maximized as employees have the ability to serve themselves to critical information instantaneously.

With today’s technology it is easier than ever to employ efficient and cost-effective solutions to preserve your corporate knowledge. KM Executive uses this technology to provide an inexpensive online solution that makes it easy to build and maintain a knowledge base and has a variety of pratical applications.

Suggestion v. Frustration

There is an abundance of of published information regarding guidelines for and benefits of an employee suggestion program. A few informative articles can be found at the Community for Human Resource Management, Chart Your Course International, and About.com.

There is a very simple context that is overlooked in most discussions about how to establish a successful employee suggestion program. Suggestions are much easier to implement if they are viewed as a solution to a frustration. A frustration in the context of business can be defined as an undesirable pattern of events that can be eliminated by installing or improving a system. It is preferable to have employees list frustrations rather than suggestions because simply listing a suggestion may not be getting to the heart of what their problem is. Simply listing a suggestion does not reveal the true core of the problem and eliminates an opportunity to provide a systematic solution in a larger context. As an example a suggestion to

‘Buy better coffee’

does not reveal the source of an individual’s concern about the situation and limits the company’s choices to find a solution. A frustration listed as

‘I get queasy when I drink the coffee in the morning’

leaves the door wide open for the company to investigate the situation and identify all of the possible solutions. This would lead to an investigation of the entire process and equipment used to make the coffee, etc. to determine if the coffee itself is indeed to problem, or if something else is causing the undesirable result.

Committed to Innovation

Bryan Yager in his article Time Management is NOT the Problem at cmoe.com suggests that a lack of focus ('strategic targets') is what keeps people from accomplishing what they want, not a lack of time.

Although strategic focus is certainly required there is another equally important aspect of commitment. We cannot try to fully address everything that comes into our lives and expect the most important things to get the attention they deserve.

For individuals with clear strategic focus this may mean giving up time with friends or 'relaxing' to hone a skill or complete a project. Or it may mean giving up time doing something they are passionate about to spend more time with friends and family. It all depends on where their focus is.

The same idea can be applied to business. Assuming there are a finite amount of resources available, any business truly committed to innovation must make a sacrifice of some sort in another area. At a bear minimum someone in the business is going to have to spend a little less time working 'in' the business and a little more time working 'on' the business. A larger sacrifice may mean parting ways with certain clients or projects to leave more time for innovation.

Most businesses will find success by committing a small amount of time each day to innovation and making it a priority. One successful strategy is to make sure you spend one hour a day, first thing in the morning, on developing and applying your strategic vision to your business. Let the normal barrage of calls, emails, and paperwork that pull at your attention take a back seat until your innovation time for the day is done. Over time the incremental changes you can bring about will have a huge impact on your business.

The bottom line goes back to the old saying - 'If you try to be all things to everyone you will be nothing to anyone.'

4 Quick Ways to Get Your Business Documentation Rolling

Good business documentation, including policy and procedure manuals, are a cornerstone of efficiency and innovation. There are various processes for systematic creation of policies and procedures. Regardless of the process used the most difficult step is the initial gathering of operational information. In this article, I suggest four time-friendly steps to begin building your business documentation.

Even a business starting with a detailed business plan does not often have detailed process documentation. Most businesses start small without any form of documentation (such as in the case of many businesses and organizations that begin with a few key individuals holding most of the knowledge). We have to realize that the businesses that do not currently have documentation for their policies, procedures and other operational knowledge probably have a pretty big job ahead of themselves in collecting and documenting it. That said, time is always a commodity in high demand and short supply so any approach should seek to minimize the time involved and maximize the efficiency of the time used. The following steps are offered with these considerations in mind.

1. Dedicate 10 minutes of every day to documentation

Having employees spend ten minutes every day in this process is a great idea for a couple of reasons. First, most people do not have fun doing documentation. By making it a short period of time, you reduce the likelihood of making the process tedious. Secondly, it is difficult for most individuals to sit and write down their knowledge, keeping the time short reduces the risks of "writer's block" and encourages writers to put down the easy stuff on the tip of their mind without bogging down with details.

2. Use "brain dumping"

When you're just getting started with documentation, it's very easy to become overwhelmed by the amount of information that needs to be transferred from your head to paper, especially if you try to be organized with it. Instead of requiring structured, complete information to start with, encourage employees to pick a topic and use their time to "dump" everything they can think of. The information can be structured and revised later - it is most important to first get the information out there and available to other members of the organization for review and comment.

3. Use reviews to generate questions and fill in holes

Assign periods of review for every document by individuals other than the original authors. Another individual will often find holes, identify assumptions, generate questions and make suggestions on a topic that the author may have overlooked due to their familiarity with a topic. This review also helps acquaint more members with more information about the organization, giving everyone better perspective on its functions and goals.

4. Include related resources

If there are articles, manuals, websites, pictures, other operational documents, etc. that help explain or clarify the subject matter, include references to them in any documentation. More relevant information may help authors or reviewers determine additional subject matter to be included or simply provide greater insight into a process without reinventing the wheel.