Your process is not living up to expectations, so you’ve decided to implement standard operating procedures (SOP) to improve process consistency, compliance, and effectiveness.  However, that project is stalled: employees are not buying into your proposed changes, and management is growing impatient.

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Business and organizational development is about business process change: not as in “process change – the event”, but “process change – the journey“.  Your business processes change in response to market forces, competition, regulations, customer demand, the economy, culture, personal beliefs, and many other factors.  The question isn’t about what is causing the business process changes — we know your business processes are going to change — the question is…

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The process maps we described in recent weeks are tools for you in your role as data collector and analyst: your role is to craft and communicate a story for change and improvement that people understand, accept, support, and will ultimately act on.  As you move from gathering data about the current process to improving it, you need tools to help communicate your improvement plan and train participants on the new process,

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Corrective action is the theme for this month.  To start the series, let’s talk about where it all begins – inputs to the corrective action process.

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We’ve made some changes over the past month at Bizmanualz, most notably, providing additional articles for our readers. I hope you have enjoyed receiving more information on different aspects of business improvement.

Read the following articles to learn more about the importance of cash procedures to the daily activities of your company and on ways to create strategic growth for your organization.

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We all hope our co-workers and employees are honest, and they probably are.  Yet, improper cash control and poor cash practices can tempt people who are basically honest.  Think about parking at the local mall.  You always roll up your windows and lock your car to protect your possessions, especially if you made some purchases at an earlier stop.  Most of the people who walk by your car at the mall are honest, yet you don’t want to tempt them by making it easy to take something that doesn’t belong to them.

Cash Security Is About Prevention

The same idea applies to your cash process; you want to use best cash practices and follow proper cash procedures.  In business you can reduce cash risk with good cash controls through removing opportunity and temptation.  While your employees may be honest, sloppy cash control is like leaving your car windows down at the mall… you are just begging for something bad to happen.

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Many companies appear to run relatively smoothly under the status quo, so they may not think about organization improvement. Minor product inconsistencies or customer complaints are normal, and the owners might think that overhauling an entire system to save a little money might not be worth it. But those same business owners would be surprised to learn that a few simple process changes and a small amount of effort can save thousands of dollars through cutting waste and improving customer quality.

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Question of the month:How can innovative leadership influence an organization’s success?

In June, our articles focused on leadership and its impact on organizational culture. The term leadership is quite broad. Whether you are the CEO of a large company or the manager of a small department, you can make a difference through your leadership skills.

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Procedures and Process Control

Why do you develop and implement policies and procedures in the first place?   By adopting policies and procedures, organizations are commonly trying to address one or more of the following needs:

1. Decrease training time;
2. Increase consistency;
3. Fulfill compliance requirements;

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Part 4 of a four-part series

Delays, we all encounter them everyday. But in process terms, delays are one of the biggest causes of ineffectiveness, inefficiencies, and poor performance. In past articles we saw how delays in the manufacturing cycle

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