Are you in a slow time? Great! Don’t resign yourself to boredom just yet! Don’t start creating chaos to give yourself something to do! This is the perfect time to work on the business itself (the root system if you go back to our tree analogy!). Here’s a few ways to get your feet wet.
- Make a Strategic Plan
- Quiet times are often wasted for lack of planning.
- Make your plan first – then put it into action. What opportunities are coming to bear as a result of the situation you find yourself in? How can you adjust to take advantage?
- How will you use all the resources at your disposal?
- Solidify Your Core Values
- Do you know the core values of your business?
- If not, spend some time thinking about what the guiding principles of the business are.
- I like this definition: A Value is a principle without which life would not be worth living. This definition requires that the values point to the WHY of your business – why does it get up in the morning? How does it know it is contributing in a valuable way to its industry and customer?
- If you do, are they codified?
- If not, take time to codify them. Make them official. Describe them so that there is no confusion about what each one means in the lexicon of your company.
- If they are, is everyone in the business aware of what them?
- If not, this is a perfect time to host some focus groups to discuss the values, generate buy-in, and get people thinking about what they really agree to when they come to work everyday.
- If so, how are you and your staff living those values out?
- If you can’t easily identify actions that denote the stated values of the company, this is a good time to ask yourself what might change in order to make your company one that actually adheres to its stated values.
- Ask your staff too! What do they think it looks like for them to live out the values?
- Do you know the core values of your business?
- Nail Your Noble Cause
- Your Noble Cause is the tight statement that describes the values, the mission, and the WHY of your company. It ties all the cultural collateral together and helps people know what they are working towards.
- Learn
- Do you wish that people in your organization could write better? Now’s your opportunity to teach them. Set up a writing development session and teach them the basics of what they are missing.
- Do you want to become a better leader? Take a leadership course you wouldn’t have had time for before.
- Do you need to develop process improvement tactics? Use this time to train staff in this way of thinking.
- What other skills do you have lying around your office that employees could benefit?
- Crosstrain
- Everybody always wishes they’d crosstrained positions when things are insane and someone gets sick. This is your opportunity to get your staff crosstrained and lessen the liability of one person knowing the job functions of any particular role.
- Tighten up Processes
- Do you have clunky processes? Are you experiencing a lot of waste in any aspect of the business? Now is the time to do a process improvement initiative – it will save you time now and money later.
- Do you see any sloppiness happening? Slop happens when things are slow and people don’t have the pressure of a short timeline to focus them. If you see slop, that’s an indicator that you have room for improvement in that process.
- Build Relationships
- This might seem like a silly one, since you are probably building relationships all the time. But don’t take it for granted. The slow time is an opportunity to reach out to the people at the bottom of your contact list.
- It’s also a chance to build relationships internally. Do you have negative competition between teams? Do you have old dynamics that need to shift?
- Introduce Operational Excellence
- The quiet times are the perfect opportunity to learn about OE and how you might begin to employ it in your company.
- Every company is different, but the Shingo Model for Operational Excellence is a great place to start.
Activity: Select two items from this list – yes, number one must be one of them! – and apply them to your business. How will you use this quiet time to improve your business?