Freeing Business to do Business

So I take the Easyjet flight to Gatwick, the Gatwick Express to London, then I take the bus to work....
Am I ruining the environment? All of it on public transport --- but then it turns out the meeting is cancelled.

So carbon emitted for no purpose.

Except for once I'm at my desk, no meetings, many people on holiday because it is half-term --- and I can actually think and do some work, write, catch-up on those things I never get a chance to do. An unexpected couple of hours!

Feels like it makes the carbon emissions worth it!

Have been experimenting with a new approach to coaching and mentoring --- this year has been a challenge with being out so much, and it seems to me that one of the best ways to help someone else progress is to give them the task, and then just ask them questions about how they will go about attacking it.

It seems to be working...

I find it very difficult not to jump in and do things myself; but one of the learnings from this past year is that if I put it all on my plate, one - it doesn't all get done and two - I wind up utterly exhausted. So using the great people I've hired is probably a very good idea.

So maxim of the day - if it's been on your to-do list for more than a week, find someone else who can do the job - it maybe be more interesting for them, gives them some variation in terms of their work, and means it won't keep sitting undone on your list!

Best,
sharon

Hi. Back from the year of medical leave. Hard to believe that I'm still having small problems! Anyhow, happy that I'm finally able to focus on working again.

It's been an interesting year, watching from the sidelines. I have been working a few days a week since August - and worked the occasional days from March to July based on what I was able to manage. But from mid-February, I'm back to four days a week.

When you are not in it full-time, you find you have a very different perspective on what goes on. And for me, it has been a really hard year learning to let go. Letting go of control at work, letting go of worry about AJ in Iraq, letting go of trying to control my health. It has been a very interesting year.

I am planning to replace this blogging software with something easier to use for freingbusiness.com and sharonboyes.com - but one of the lessons I'm learning is that I cannot do too much at the moment, so that hasn't happened yet.

So have decided in the meantime to begin posting again here.

Also find me at Twitter - ssboyes is my moniker.

Best,
Sharon

Looking forward to the new software (not out there yet).

Spent the day with my niece sightseeing in London with all the crowds. We went to the Tower of London, there was a mad rush of people in the front gate. As we went further and further, though, the crowds got smaller and smaller, until we finally were the only ones walking in relative quiet and peace. So often, programs and "flavour-of-the-month" initiatives fall by the wayside simply because the traffic needed to keep the programme running falls to such a low level.

One thing to remember is the Ebbinghaus principle, which says that people's memory of an experience/learning declines more rapidly after several days have passed; without reminders of any learning, after 30 days it is almost as if it never happened.

Keeping important programmes alive (quality, information security, process re-engineering) requires frequent and effective reminders of the salient points.

Or you'll be wandering alone.

That's nice on a crowded day in an historic monument.

Not so nice if you are responsible for a quality initiative and no one is remembering to do their part.

New blog software - and good intentions to regularly update the blog using a handier piece of software. (Although you know what they say about good intentions.)

The start of the summer sees me finally getting back to normal after the long winter and spring of medical leave. Working with our healthcare client and doing some process & profitability work with their end clients is making me feel like the world is returning to right-side up.

Having spent so much time in "idle mode", I've had the time to seriously think about how coaching and mentoring can be used more effectively in change management. The mind is enormously strong and trails everything else in its wake. Keeping people positive, giving them examples to support the fact that they can make it happen, that whetever we are trying to do can succeed -- this is the human element of making change happen. Change is scary - and often when faced with change, people flee as quickly as their feet can take them or stand completely still like a deer in the headlamps. Neither response is the one the business needs.

Once more I'm reminded that it is the personal that is important, and "what's in it for me?" is the primary question we need to answer - although answered in context of the person as well as the team and the organisation.

It is so much easier to pull people towards a vision than to push them in front of you towards a goal (think magnets versus herding cats).

So you have painted the picture of why, how and "yes, we can do it", yet you still have to make it happen (on time, on budget). What do you do?

You ask the most important coaching question of the week: "How certain are you that you can make this change, with 1 being not really and 10 being quite certain?" - and follow it with "And what do you need to do to make it a 10?"

After almost 12 months - I'm back to bloging.

Great news, SkyScape Solutions Consultants have just helped another client become ISO 9001 and ISO 27001 accredited!

Congratulations to Capula Healthcare Limited. They have been SkyScape's major client since late 2006. We have helped them in the transition to separate company after the parent company was sold, and have used our business profitability and process know-how to assist them in generating a profitable 2007 and through the acquisition of proper processes for information security and business management.

CHL is in the healthcare software and services arena, and SkyScape have been enjoying learning that industry and applying our supply chain, logistics and process expertise to a new area -- but with the usual results, it works!

The most important lesson I've had over this past year is that the macro processes that drive good logistics and supply chain management are equally appliable in patient care. Rapid movement through the process through streamlining procedures and eliminating un-necessary steps whilst collecting data in as automated a fashion as possible works just as well in the patient journey as it does in getting the right part to the engineer to fix a machine down.

The key tenets of making a better and more effective process work just the same when applied to the movement of people through a healthcare process as they do goods through a supply chain. You have to accurately identify, measure and improve the links/interfaces between actions.

And technology (RFID, 3D Barcodes, Smartphone applications) are just as important in healthcare as they are in logistics.

I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised, but I was .... the amount of directly applicable actions which would have been identical in the logistics environment and worked in a hospital environment was staggering to me.

So my thought of the day is --- try it, it might be relevant and it may very well work. Just because you are tackling a problem in a new area, or a new industry or a new company, don't assume that the tried and true approaches you used before wouldn't work.

Hoping you're enjoying nice weather wherever you are... the daffodils just starting to bloom here in Holland.

I loved the idea of a blog - spending some time letting other people in on our thinking process and hopefully giving them some ideas to improve the profitability of their business.

Of course, reality rarely turns out like you expect! Instead of writing loads of columns of wisdom (which I could compile into a great-selling book), I post once in a blue moon - literally.

There was a lovely lunar eclipse a few weeks ago - so I suspect it is time for another post.

I've chosen for today's quote "You can be right or you can be rich but you cannot be both. People who have to be right do not listen and people who do not listen will not be successful."

I have to credit the quote to the wise Keith Cunningham who talked about this in his weekend seminar in London - which I should have been at but was too ill to attend. However, it was a gem in the notes passed to me by a thoughtful classmate today.

I don't know what Keith meant when he said it over the weekend, but I know how I think of it .... it is a guideline for change. It makes me think about how process change works and why it sometimes doesn't.


You have to have the ability to admit that what you are doing now isn't working 100% - without understanding that today's process isn't right - you cannot change it.

It reminds me of the story of the Zen Master who had a student come to visit. The student was an experienced businessman who had been very successful, and when the Zen Master poured tea for his visitor, he just kept pouring and pouring and the cup overflowed. The moral of the story was that the businessman came with his cup already full, and without being able to empty it - to admit not knowing - he couldn't receive anything new. (For quite a few lovely Zen stories, see Paul Reps "Zen Flesh, Zen Bones".)

I suspect that a lot of process redesigns fail because the person who is the process owner cannot accept that the process is broken (or at least isn't 100%). It may be his or her baby, and it is just too hard to believe that what he/she has designed might not be perfect. It is more important for that person to believe that they are right, than to let in the possibility of wrong which allows change.

For nothing is perfect in business, and certainly nothing in business can be sustainably perfect as all sorts of external factors change even if the internal ones do not. You must constantly acknowledge that what you are doing is not perfect and can be improved.

If you just keep doing what you are currently doing, you'll just get more of what you've currently got. If that's a little profit, you will get a little more profit. If you want amazing profit and you aren't making that now - then you really need to admit that you have to do something differently to reap different rewards.

And that's what Spring is all about - doing a little spring-cleaning to let in a bit of sunshine and to sweep out the cob-webs of old ideas.

Enjoy the spring! Admit your processes aren't perfect. Try something new. Don't be right! And become more profitable in the process of not being right!

Well, the summer has come and gone. And the weather here in the UK has gone all autumnal. Fog in the mornings, cool and damp in the evenings - grey and gloomy most of the time.

A sunny day with gloriously-coloured leaves slowly falling from the trees would be a really nice change!

And change is the subject.

If your business seems a bit grey and gloomy this month, add some change!

It takes real motivation and effort to get change going, but it is even harder to stay the course.

Keith Cunningham has a wonderful phrase "Get in line, stay in line".

How often do we change lines because ours is going slower? How often do we change lanes on the road because the other lane is going faster? How often do we give up and get out of line altogether? And how true is that when it comes to a change programme that we are trying to implement in a business?

The truth is that if we stay with it, we get to the front of the line eventually. If we don't stay in line, we won't get there.... ever.

I think that to see change truly embedded in an organisation where the benefits are consistent and truly experienced -- that takes time. And you have to stay in line.

Quick benefits and low-hanging fruit are great things --- but sustained effort produces sustainable change and profitability in the longer term. A solid business. Certainly worth staying in line.

It has been a long time since I last posted. A combination of loads of work (a quality problem, really); a summer visitor from the US and the holiday season here in Europe have conspired to keep me busier than a one-armed paper hanger.

But I have to say that despite the time-lag, I'm just as enthused today as I was a month ago about our idea to spread the process of making your business more profitable. We are looking at ways to reach more people, and one of the best looks to be seminars and/or evening events.

We are focussing on the small-to-medium market segment of companies with under 100 employees and generally under £25M in revenue - the companies that are too small to use our "big cousins" like McKinsey or Accenture, but large enough to want to do something serious in terms of continual improvement.

Our first seminar is going to be "Using Process to Assess and Achieve Greater Profitability", and we are preparing now to launch it in September. Keep watching!

It's been a very interesting month. In the past four weeks, we've made the decision to change the focus of our company. We have always worked on large projects with our clients, helping them to identify and remove unnecessary cost from their businesses; generally using our business process tool with them, sometimes just in the background.

But after spending all this time "doing" the work, we are realising that what we enjoy most is creating the teams and teaching them to do the work; facilitating the workshops, passing along the tools and the knowledge.

We have decided to put a lot more focus on this in our SkyScape business, and we have just set up a new area of the business - "growth days". We will be offering a series of workshops and taster events to clients and non-clients alike, where we share with them and teach them to use the tools that we have found so effective in our work.

Watch this space, and within the next few months we will be announcing our first events. I hope you will join us!

I was privileged to meet Keith Cunningham last weekend. What a fantastic guy! Listened to him speak for a few hours, and learned an enormous amount from him. But what made the most impact was his forumula for greatness.

G = I + E + S

Greatness = Inspiration plus Experience plus Skills

If you don't have all three, then greatness is a very big stretch goal.

I realised that what inspires me at work is helping and teaching others - not the doing, but the enabling of others. And so thanks to Keith, I'm going to be changing the focus of what we do at SkyScape to be better at enabling our clients to manage process and change themselves.

We are setting up a number of courses which will give our clients the right toolkits to enable change in themselves and their businesses.

Watch this space!