Leadership Turn

Six Steps To Help You Achieve More With Less

by Jonathan Farrington on June 27th, 2007

Getting more for less or more from the same level of resources, is my simple definition of efficiency.

Here then are six steps you can take that will help you achieve those increased targets:

Step One: Understand your operation

- Do you know your operation well enough to improve it?

Step Two: Set the right objectives
 
- Do you have the right objectives to steer improvement?

Step Three: Check customer perception

- How can you identify non-value-added (wasteful) activity?
- How can you remove it?

Step Four: Increase capacity

- Are you meeting demand?
- What action(s) can you take?
- How efficient are your resources?

Step Five: Continuously improve
 
- Do you have a systematic approach to constant improvement?

Step Six: Check customer perception

- How effective have your efforts been?
- How can you tell?

Finally, when you review your performance, benchmark yourself against the “Leadership Acid Test”:

When thinking about your own people, 

 Do you understand their motivators – what is driving all of them?
 Do you always have visibility of their numbers – year to date, forecast vs. required performance?
 Activity levels – do they work hard and smart enough?
 Do you review their performance regularly?
 Do they all have personal development plans?
 Do you encourage a “How can we do it better” mindset?
 Do your people “enjoy” working for you? 

Tomorrow: My guest author is Daryl Green: “The Faulty Outlook of Arrogant Leadership”

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POSTED IN: Leadership Skills