Business Management - Productivity/Process Improvement

Wouldn’t it be great if the mistakes we make in our businesses would self-correct? PAIN can be a good reason to self-correct when what you’re doing isn’t working out. However, many of those who make the mistakes feel NO PAIN!

We’re thankful to have family in for the Thanksgiving holiday, so I won’t be writing a regular blog this week. Instead, I’ll only write to say, there’s something to be said for the traditions—the SYSTEMS, if you will—of our lives. We have so much to be thankful for!

Once upon a time, I worked at a studio where every file had to be checked by three people before it went out to the printer. Every file, every time. What do you do when you spot a client’s error?

I’ve always felt it critical to keep constant track of my company’s sales break-even number. The strategy is to build your cost structure so that you can at least “break even” in the projected lowest sales month of the year.

Last week, I was interviewing a candidate for an enterprise QC management position. His response to one of my questions struck me as profoundly disturbing: “Never in my career have I been called with good news.”

My book (“System Busters: How to Stop Them in Your Business”) has become required reading in specific departments for some colleges, and I was happy to receive some feedback from a particular professor recently. He asked his students to write a report on their thoughts about the book’s overall message and whether or not they believed it would help them in their future professions.

This morning, I watched Jason Freid’s talk, titled “Why work doesn’t happen at work.” Everyone knows about the constant interruptions at work, and the lunacy of running from meeting to meeting without ever getting a chance to accomplish anything.

When I pulled the report on all five of the employees in that department, both our jaws dropped. The software report confirmed that the one we “felt” had made the least amount of errors had actually made the most.

Without sufficient sales at the top of the funnel, you’ll never cover your fixed costs to see black at the bottom. Most people in the industry would say their tightest bottlenecks are their sales organizations, except this time of year when the source shifts to production.

In honor of Oct. 23, which was originally scheduled to be National No-Print Day but turned into Yes Print Day!, Dead Tree Edition offers this update on printing-related technology and what it means for print buyers.—Recent developments in postpress technology underscore the importance of looking beyond price when choosing a printer.