The Lucky Cabin

Nowadays numerous companies think that, when all of their employees have sufficient health & safety education, they now have all the experience they need to prevent an incident. The truth is however, employees require more than education in health & safety legislation. You must provide your staff with appropriate supervision, the appropriate equipment, and regular practice.

An individual in a supervisory capacity has an even bigger function to play than just managing the floor. The supervisor you pick out must understand that health & safety instruction is essential and have the ability to get everybody excited about it.

As well as enforcing rules and regulations, the supervisor must furthermore make certain that every employee performs to the highest standard. This is no easy job. An accomplished supervisor is required to have a thorough understanding of both the industry and production not to mention a high standard of familiarity with safety laws, risk assessment, and emergency assistance techniques. It simply isn’t enough to provide your employees with health & safety education. They need to gain practical experience of risk assessment and the identification of hazards. Employees have to know the best way of dealing with safety risks and also how to act when the unexpected happens. Not until these processes become automatic are staff properly prepared. Safety equipment is equally as vital to the your workers’ safety as training. When they do not have the right gear or alternatively if staff see that equipment is broken only after a crisis has happened, then all the education available won’t help them.

You have to schedule frequent checks to ascertain if you have all the necessary supplies and that it’s working properly. When you have a problem with your safety apparatus, be certain to get it rectified as speedily as you can and put it back in the right place.

Your employees have to get appropriate health and safety instruction, however they also require the correct gear, the chance to practise, and a knowledgeable supervisor who can get the workforce charged up about being healthy at work. If you implement these steps you should find all the safety regulations soon become part of the workforce’s working habits rather than an inconvenience for everyone to remember.

There is more to turning a profit than just the income - it’s important to be bringing in money cost-effectively. performance management software, despite often being omitted, provides a significant asset for enterprises wanting to do this.

It is common knowledge that an efficient business adjusts its procedures to the strengths of each employee in order to get the best out of them. While this data is highly useful, it is not really easy to obtain. Determining and keeping track of development through employee appraisal alone can be a huge hassle. First, you implement employee evaluation reviews to assess and keep track of all work carried out by each member of staff. Analyzing all of this information is next. Before you can put it to use determining goals and tracking future progress you have to know what the data means in practice. Employing performance appraisal software you can be confident that this preliminary work is taken care of and you only need to scrutinize the different analyses and factors to discover what the right targets for this employee would be. It also makes keeping track of the employee’s progress much less effort. Yielding as it does more accurate information in less time, this is a major saving on its own. It’s also possible, of course, simply to use the software to record raw information like performance review forms and to make your own analysis.

And improving the efficiency of your staff is simply one of the advances you can make using performance management software. Both suppliers and clients can be analyzed using such software programs, giving you more performance management tools. It’s easy to check who provides higher grade products, for the best prices and also reveal those with bad damage records or slow delivery times. When it comes to clients the software can help there telling you exactly who your best seller is, their loss percentage and any similar troubles, and serving as a reminder of any payment issues. You can then adjust your orders and stock handling to increase your profits while cutting expenses. As well as this, a greater awareness of your market will make for easier planning of your advertising.

Watching both suppliers and market is smooth sailing with performance management software. It also makes employee performance management quick, simple, and more effective in addition to helping encourage staff members by giving them precise targets dramatically. With all that taken into account, it’s clear that the real benefits of this system are endless and depend entirely on your ability to use the information put at your disposal!

People management is important for business success. With a little effort you may learn and develop these skills. It can be a plus to have a intuitive affinity for people, even so there are a lot of things you can do that will make the procedure simple.

Relationship Building: Remembering people by name should be a great beginning. Engage in conversation; make eye contact when you are speaking. Do be respectful, and pay attention to everything the other individual has to say, even if you disagree or have a different opinion. Listening to everything employees have to offer is one of the most important people management skills you can develop. Show an interest in what they can offer the business.

Show integrity: Keeping your promises is key. If your word is not kept, it can damage trust, and without trust employees won’t offer their best. Each time you make a statement or give a promise, you are wasting your time and effort if you don’t keep your promises. The truth is, if you can’t be counted on, you can be sure they will act in the same fashion. Encourage any observations: It’s a two-way street. People management skills mean having an open mind to all feedback. Being approachable and open proves that you want to hear other people’s views, and they will appreciate your opinions. Frank discussion also furthers creative problem solving, new ways of fulfilling the mission of the team, and strengthens the company dynamic. By giving the staff a voice, each member of staff takes ownership of the outcome. Communicating is the key: Communication is the key to managing employees effectively. Be approachable, utilize good listening techniques, be open minded, and encourage each of your team members to express their opinions. Inspire team members not only to speak with you, but also with each other. The exchange of thoughts is important in the creative process, and in listening to each other, it is much easier to find issues before they could present as problems, and corrective measures may be applied before matters get out of hand. Acquiring these techniques can require time, all the same the rewards are worth it. Through promoting a good team dynamic and by listening to your team’s opinions, a flourishing business can be yours.

A Flexible, affordable CRM system

At no cost or obligation, SugarCRM is able to deliver a feature-rich CRM application. Sugar Open Source is right for you. Think about SugarCRM if you do not have a current CRM system; your current system is too expensive; or is not delivering the value you expect.

Powerful Functionality

If your company does not have a systematic way to handle CRM processes such as coordinating contacts, opportunities, and accounts, managing email lists and marketing campaigns, or handling service requests and customer issues, give SugarCRM can be the answer.

Flexibility

SugarCRM was built with flexibility in mind, so you can easily import data and customize tabs, views and layouts to display only the information that is important to your business.

Quick Installation

Sugar Open Source is a “light-weight” web application so it can be installed quickly without the need for additional hardware and long implementation processes. You’ll be surprised how quickly you are up and running.

Easy-to-Use

The user interface is fast and intuitive so your employees will understand how to use the application in a matter of hours.

Open Source Community Support

You will be part of a vast community of users. SugarCRM is supporting thousands of small businesses who contribute their thoughts and practices for using Sugar Open Source on our user forums. Learn some best practices and gain valuable insight into the SugarCRM user community.

In the business world, people often hear the term “Think outside the box”, with little or no explanation as to how to actually do that. Everyone is just expected to know how, figure it out, or find another job. Brainstorming sessions often lead to a slew of ideas from a group, but with little or no structure, it’s difficult to tell what ideas are worth pursuing and which are wasting space.

There is a brainstorming strategy that, when used with a couple of other follow-up methods, will allow for creative thoughts to come from the group and still home in on the ideas that will actually benefit the overall goal. The three steps of the strategy are mind maps, t-analysis and action plan creation. Let’s look at the first step, mind maps.

This step does a couple of things for a group brainstorm: it acts as an ice breaker, it gets people’s brains pointing in the right direction and it can produce ideas that might not otherwise surface during just a normal call and response brainstorm session. Break your group up into smaller groups of at most 4 or 5. With each group should be a large sheet of paper (lecture board paper will do fine) and several different colored markers. The groups should be instructed to write the focus of your brainstorm in the middle of the paper and draw a circle around it. So if you were interested in brainstorming new ways to market a particular product, you’d write the product name in the middle of the paper. If you wanted to brainstorm on ways to control costs, you’d write Costs in the middle of the paper.

Once this is done, instruct the groups to draw lines branching out from the center and to write down anything that relates to the central thought. Remind them several times during the exercise that it doesn’t matter how relevant or not it is, simply write down what comes to mind. As groups write down different items, they should circle those and branch off these sub-topics as well. What ends up happening is groups will get a large network of ideas branching off the central thought, some of which may interconnect as well (and if they do, instruct the groups to draw a line connecting the two sub-topics). While the initial sub-topics will be things that are likely already being done or are an obvious connection, the branches off the sub-topics are where the true ideas start to emerge and some new thoughts are likely to present themselves here.

Once the groups have completed their mind maps, open up discussion and have each group step through their mind map. Highlight new ideas and encourage discussion on items that may initially seem unrelated, to be sure there isn’t a potentially great idea hidden in there. Also highlight common sub-topics listed between groups, as this indicates things that are either already in place, or things the group thinks should be in place. Discuss the effectiveness of these items and what will ultimately happen is a list of actionable items will begin to surface through discussion. Between the mind maps, the discussion and the list, your group will have their minds actively engaged in coming up with action steps to put some of the new ideas into place. Once this is done, your next step will be to conduct a T-analysis on the topics.

So to lead a powerful brainstorm session, it’s important to have a game plan in place. Mind maps help focus the group in the right direction and enable discussions that will help everyone as a group “think outside the box”.

Michael Russell Your Independent guide to Brainstorming

Six Sigma projects are not immune from a failure. Just like any other business improvement initiative there are projects that don’t succeed. When projects aren’t successful, it is not the fault of the system itself but rather it is to do with the implementation and application of the system. Let’s face it, if the system itself was inadequate there would not be so many success stories.

Many people perceive a project as unsuccessful when it fails to meet the targeted savings. This is a view that needs to be questioned and may best be done by way of the example below.

A common metric for projects is ROI, Return on Investment. One might question whether not reaching a particular ROI number is a strictly a failure. For instance if the target ROI is 15% and the project ends up delivering a ROI of 10-12% would you really call it a failure? That’s a matter for individual organisations to decide. Personally, I think that having a return of this magnitude can still be considered successful. It’s just not quite as successful as initially hoped.

Further, I have recently heard of a manufacturing changeover project that was targeting a mold change of under a minute in an injection machine. The actual changeover time at the end of the project was 9 minutes. Was this a failure? To answer this question one would need to know what the baseline was. Prior to the improvement project the changeover time was over 60 minutes. Either way, this improvement is significant. An actual reduction in changeover time of 85% is still an excellent result.

So rather than be concerned about failure one should be concerned with making projects more successful and how better to meet the desired outcomes.

Some of the common reasons that Six Sigma implementations don’t always deliver the results are:-

• Overly optimistic targets
• Demanding too short payback periods
• Inadequately defined projects
• Projects not aligned to company objectives
• Not embracing the Six Sigma mindset
• Viewing it as a mathematical exercise
• Lack of commitment from Champions
• Training the wrong people
• Isolated and sporadic projects
• Lack of an “umbrella” project coordinating activities and resources
• Applying the wrong tools for the task at hand
• Providing insufficient time for staff to dedicate to project tasks
• Lack of an experienced mentor for new practitioners

As we can see, the range of factors for organisations not achieving their desired outcomes from Six Sigma projects are quite varied. What should be obvious is that none of these things are particularly difficult to resolve with the right help. Six Sigma training provides people with the skills and knowledge to apply the tools but the real benefits come from correctly applying the methodology and philosophy to meet business objectives. This skill comes from practice and takes time to develop.

Organisations who are new to Six Sigma should seek help and guidance from experienced practitioners to ensure that their improvement projects are as successful as can possible.

2006 © Unbound Business Solutions P/L. All rights reserved

John Yealland is a management consultant and Certified Six Sigma Champion and Black Belt. His skills span the areas of I.T, Training, Logistics, Manufacturing and Operations. John can be contacted at http://www.unboundbusiness.com.au

Systems thinking is important for Organizational Change (OC)
practitioners (and managers) because rarely is there an “evil”
person in the organization bent on bringing pain and
destruction. Bad behavior, or ineffective behavior, is often
unwittingly rewarded by management. Protecting turf, not
communicating with peers, not contributing to the team, high
absenteeism, and resisting change happen for a reason.

In many organizations (especially in American organizations),
the management team goes “headhunting” immediately after an
error occurs or a problem arises. “Heads will roll!” they
declare. The assumption is that there is a bad person causing
the problem; if they get rid of the person, they get rid of the
problem.

More often than not, the person is not “the problem.” The
problem is typically embedded in the system. If we don’t change
the system, we will soon face the same problem again.

Lessons from Other Professionals

Systems theory was not originally developed by OC practitioners.
Systems theory has roots in the early theories of physical
scientists. They correctly understood that physical phenomena
don’t operate in a closed vacuum; physical phenomena
continuously interact with other phenomena in any given system.

Fortunately, the wisdom of systems theory did not start and end
with the physical scientists. Social scientists, including
sociologists and psychologists, have also adopted a systems
approach.

Systems thinking has been a highly effective tool of counselors
with at-risk youths. “At-risk youths” is a nice way of talking
about the types of teenagers who frighten us (at risk for drug
use, teenage pregnancy, or a life of crime). Many frustrated
counselors were devoting many hours to these youths. Typically,
after these youths faced up to their problems, and committed to
changing their behavior, they were sent home. But with alarming
predictability, these at-risk youths reverted to their old
behaviors. Why? Were they insincere about change?

Counselors eventually realized that sending these youths back to
the same abusive fathers, alcoholic mothers, and drug-abusing
friends was inviting failure. The youths needed support for
their new behavior; that meant changing the system. Counselors
began counseling the entire family. Changing the system (the
family) has been much more effective.

Organizational change consultants and managers must take the
same systemic approach. Peter Senge is often quoted for his work
on organizational learning. Personally, I believe Senge’s larger
contribution is in the application of systems thinking to
business organizations. Systemic change involves a lot of work,
but the change is powerful and lasting.

Open Systems

Open systems theory takes systems thinking one step further.
Systems Theory changes our diagnostic focus from the individual
to the system. Open Systems Theory helps us recognize the fact
that the system itself is embedded in another, larger system.
This larger system, its environment, exerts substantial
influence on the organization.

As OC practitioners we may see system-wide problems that exist
within the walls of the organization, but we must remain aware
of the environment in which the organization operates. A
business organization’s environment includes its customers,
suppliers, competitors, government regulators, and so on.

I have worked with so many people over the years that have made me wonder how on earth they can work at their desk when everything that was in their drawers and in their filing cabinets have ended up in piles on top of their keyboard. One co-worker of mine couldn’t remember what colour the top of his desk was! I had to say something, but when I did, he told me that he knew where everything was and needed all that paperwork for different projects he was working on.

Some study suggest that about 15% of our time is wasted on looking for misplaced files and paperwork at the office. People get really defensive when you tell them that their desk is a mess. They say that they don’t have time to clean up, as they are too busy. And if they would file certain items they would forget to work on it and would therefore miss the deadline.

Let me tell you a secret: You can’t work on four projects at once with a messy desk. You will misplace papers in wrong folders, spend 15 minutes looking for that form that you had right there, look for an important message that was in that folder but no longer is, etc. You will not be able to continue working like this without a major mistake happening.

Getting organised

It may take you all day to clean your desk but believe me when I say that it will save your sanity!

First things first. Get yourself some folders and a black marker. Take every piece of paper on your desk one by one and file them. Make sure that everything you need to do with these papers is written down on a ‘to-do’ list or even better in your computer organiser. For example, if you have to work on your budget next Monday, write down ‘work on budget’ in your computer organiser so that when Monday comes, your computer will send you a reminder that you need to work on your budget today. Then file that paper in a folder named ‘budget’. Put that folder away - not on your desk!! But in your filing cabinet. Proceed this way with every bit of information that clutters your desk. Do not get distracted by a form that reminds you that you need to do something. Instead, jot it down on your ‘to- do’ list or in your organiser. You won’t forget it as it has been written down. File it and move on. Keep focused. Only do one thing at a time for the moment and that is to organise and clean your desk.

Copyright © 2005 EffectiveTimeManagement.com All rights reserved.

My name is Catherine Nellissen. I have been organising events and training for over 11 years. I have learned the hard way how important it is to stay on top of what’s happening and making sure that everyone working with me knows what to do in a timely matter. I believe that organization is the key to a successful career and life! Over the years, I have created templates that help me and the people that work with me keep on top of our busy workloads and reach our personal goals. I have decided to share my knowledge of time management, hoping to help other people take control of their busy lives and make sure they accomplish what their heart desires. Life’s too short — get organised!!

If you would like more information about this subject and managing your time more effectively click on this link http://www.effectivetimemanagement.com

“You may all go to hell, and I will go to Texas.” -Davy Crockett

Davy Crockett delivered this line to an appreciative after-dinner audience on January 5, 1836 in Nacogdoches, Texas. The crowd loved it and Davy knew he’d finally gotten it right. It will probably surprise some folks to learn that Davy Crockett, like most politicians, had a stump speech that he burnished till it glowed like a new penny. He’d coined this particular phrase a little more than two years earlier in a speech about the likely presidential candidacy of Martin Van Burena man he detested. People seemed to like it so he kept playing with it until he got the words just rightby which time, of course, he was already in Texas. In the process, the “you” had switched from Van Buren to the constituents who had recently declined to send him back to a fourth term in congressbut the general sentiment was the same.

Now folks, who found that last bit of information surprising, will be even more surprised to learn that Davy Crockett had expected to spend 1836 running for President on the Whig party ticket against the aforementioned, Martin Van Buren. This was no idle dream. The Whigs had sent Crockett on two east coast trips to test his candidacy. He proved to be wildly popular. In his plain-spoken frontiersman way, he seemed the perfect foil to the urbane and prim Van Buren. Of course it didn’t hurt that he was America’s favorite celebrity at the time. The most popular play of the day featured a buck-skin clad hero named Col. Nimrod Wildfire who, despite the playwright’s denials, everyone immediately recognized as Davy Crockett. His own best-selling book, A Narrative of the Life of Davy Crockett cemented his fame.

All Crockett needed to secure his future was reelection. He didn’t think it would be a problem, but Andrew Jackson thought otherwise and ensured Crockett’s defeat. Though he had never had any particular interest in Texas, the public expected him to follow through on his promise and actually go. And so he went; figuring it might be a good way to restart his political career. Unfortunately, everyone along the way expected him to go and fight, though that had never entered his mind. So it was that Davy Crockett found himself in the Alamowilling of course to diebut there largely because the public left him no other choice.

Crockett’s dilemma is not unlike the one many of us face today. Often we find ourselves behaving in ways that are aimed at pleasing everyone but ourselves. Work, family and social expectations lash us like belligerent mules until we drop. What’s more, our time slips away like air leaving a balloon because we can’t say no. As we are propelled towards someone else’s vision of us, we can barely remember who we are or who we hoped to be. We end up being prisoners of someone else’s expectations.

There are Alamo moments in everyone’s lifetimes that test your mettle and demand much from you. When they come, be sure they are your moments. Don’t let yourself be drawn into situations where you’re asked to put everything on the line for something you really don’t believe in. And if you’re not careful, it can happen before you know it.

I suspect Davy Crockett thought about the White House and of the presidency as dawn cracked the horizon on March 6, 1836. He was probably wryly amused by the events that led him to San Antonio de Bexar. A year and a day later, Martin Van Buren became the eighth President of the United States.

About the Author:

George Ebert is the President of Trinity River Seminars and Consulting, a firm specializing in the custom design and delivery of team building, personal growth and ethical development programs. Mr. Ebert is a highly sought after speaker, educator, and consultant with over thirty years experience in both the public and private sectors. He has presented widely throughout the Unites States. George is the author of the management cult classic, “Climbing From the Fifth Station: A guide to building teams that work!”