The first instruction for doing the minimum to create a perfect result through your business model is:
Determine the needs of the beneficiaries, customers, and users.
Organizations often skip this step. Here's a typical example: When you want to rent a function room in a nice hotel or restaurant, the establishment will have a target profit they want to earn from you for use of that...
Successful organizations know that business models need to be continually improved in order to add profitability and effectiveness. A good place to start is to be sure you understand what customers, users, and beneficiaries really need. Most organizations are providing offerings that match what they want to offer rather than what is desired.
After you know what the actual needs and desires...
Many nonprofit organizations and for-profit providers get confused when a beneficiary encourages them to make it simple. The providers imagine some bare-bones offering that provides no choices.
Let's look at the problems with providing bare-bones offerings to make life simpler for beneficiaries. Among tools, a standard screwdriver is considered by many to be a simple offering.
But...
Everyone today is excited about the opportunities to sell products to China's more than one billion people. To turn that opportunity into reality will require substantial changes in your offerings. How can you use cost reductions for beneficiaries, users, and customers to expand the size of the market for your offerings by 20 times while earning an attractive profit?
Imagine that you...
Unfortunately, the world is still beset with too many stalls based on complacency, tradition, disbelief, misconceptions, unattractiveness, miscommunications, bureaucracy, and procrastination. While those stalls persist, unnecessary delays and mistakes will continue to plague us all.
But a small organization could make the effort to learn how to bust all of these stalls using the...
It doesn't matter how many road obstacles are removed in your mind by such mental exercises. If your vehicle isn't up to providing a comfortable, safe, and efficient journey, you won't arrive at where you want to go.
Most astute car buyers know that a test drive helps them avoid buyer's remorse. Now that rental car companies offer more types of cars, minivans, SUVs, and trucks, you can...
In some businesses and nonprofit organizations, you can make one decision and receive your offerings automatically for years. Here's an example: I recently learned about a new magazine, Make, that caught my fancy. Ordering a subscription online, I was pleasantly surprised to be offered a discount on the first year's price if I agreed to be automatically billed for renewals. Obviously, if I...
To reduce delays for beneficiaries and users, you need one-step actions for them and for your organization. Perhaps no better example of reducing delays can be seen than in the ways that some retailers are streamlining purchasing processes.
If you go to the usual mass merchandiser's store, you soon have a shopping cart full of bulky items or overloaded arms. You make rapid progress...
Very simple ideas lie within the reach only of complex minds. --Remy de Gourmont
Imagine if you had to assemble your car, truck, or SUV before you could drive it. Even the most talented and experienced mechanic would find that a challenge without a good set of instructions and a well-equipped garage.
As daunting as that task seems to us, Henry Ford realized that if he broke down the...
Delays are created when someone or an item has to proceed through a multiple-step process. Delays are eliminated when a multiple-step process is replaced by a one-step action.
Here's an example of how batch manufacturing used to work in the steel industry: A customer placed an order. The salesperson had to write up the order in a certain way. Once the order was filled out, it had to be...
