Anyone who’s ever worked in an office has been frustrated by the illogical activities and errors that occur over and over. Orders come in with missing data. Numbers have to be reconciled repeatedly. A company can keep track of 100,000 parts on its assembly line without a single error, but can’t seem to manage the chart of accounts in finance.
Employees mutter, shake their heads and chalk it up to the cost of doing business…
Read More
This article from The Lab was featured by Manufacturing Today.
Executives rarely question their ability to notice the value available to their businesses. They might admit they leave a small amount of opportunity on the table, but they cannot imagine overlooking the routine waste of 15 to 20 percent of their earnings. It’s impossible. Someone would notice.
Unless “noticing” is fundamentally flawed…
Read More
Executives at a global brokerage knew that errors crept into new account setup and paid a costly staff to correct them. Sound familiar?
Everyone at the brokerage thought the sales force was the cause of this “insignificant, unavoidable” cost of doing business.
Although less than 20% of applications included errors, 60% of the staff’s time was devoted to correcting them. And since staff members found their tasks satisfyingly challenging, and executives perceived them as unavoidable, this “virtuous waste” remained hidden in plain sight…
Read More
“People only see what they are prepared to see,” Ralph Waldo Emerson said.
And so it is with business improvement, particularly in the realm of the “knowledge worker.” Prepare your mind to see more and you will find improvements that can increase the value of your business by 15-20% or more…
Read MoreSince opening its doors in 1993, The Lab has helped some of the best companies in the world become even better.
