SYS 164: Encouraging Innovation: Fostering a Culture of Continual Improvement in Small Businesses
🎙 In this episode, Steve Day shares a celebratory moment within his business where a staff member presented a process improvement idea. The episode delves into the importance of creating a culture of continual improvement within small businesses.
Steve highlights the five key elements necessary for fostering this culture: values, tools, knowledge, opportunity, and confidence. Through a detailed breakdown, he explains how having the right values, providing the necessary tools and knowledge, offering opportunities for improvement, and instilling confidence in staff members can lead to significant advancements in business processes.
The episode showcases a real-life example of how empowering staff members to take ownership of process improvements can lead to positive outcomes and growth within the organisation.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
💡 Values: Establish core values within your business that prioritise systems improvement and encourage a culture of continual professional development.
💡 Tools: Implement frameworks like the Sharpen with Ease process and task board management systems to empower your staff to automate, streamline, or eliminate processes effectively.
💡 Knowledge: Provide ongoing training and opportunities for learning to equip your team with the knowledge needed to identify areas for improvement and implement changes.
💡 Opportunity: Allocate dedicated time and resources for staff to focus on process improvement, ensuring they have the capacity to explore new ideas and strategies.
💡 Confidence: Foster a supportive environment where staff feel empowered to take risks, try new approaches, and learn from successes and failures in pursuing continual improvement.
BEST MOMENTS
00:14 - 💬 “It means that it's not you, the business owner or the manager, that has to do all the thinking, creativity, and systems improvement basically.”
03:07 - 💬 “And as a small business owner, it's absolutely game-changing.”
04:20 - 💬 “Values are an important part of every business. We all have them, whether we've documented them or not.”
20:12 - 💬 “As a manager, what we're trying to do is to encourage people to just ‘have a go’. And the key way to do that is to not pass judgment on the suggested improvement or on the plan they wanna implement and just let it happen.”
TIMESTAMPED OVERVIEW
00:00 Small business owners see continuous improvement success.
04:44 Actions must align with professed values to matter.
09:39 Empower through knowledge and professional development.
12:03 Small businesses can emulate successful marketing strategies.
15:50 Testing ideas crucial, measure, implement, time needed.
19:07 "Book inspires taking action, accepting responsibility."
20:11 As a business owner, struggle with involvement and judgment.
23:36 Encourage confidence, celebrate trying, and act positively.
VALUABLE RESOURCES
Website: https://www.systemizeyoursuccess.com
Facebook Group: https://facebook.com/groups/systemsandoutsourcing/
LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/company/systemsandoutsourcing/
Instagram: https://instagram.com/systems_and_outsourcing/
YouTube: https://youtube.com/@drsteveday42
ABOUT THE HOST
Steve used to be a slave to his business, but when he moved to Sweden in 2015, he was forced to change how he worked. He switched to running his businesses remotely. After totally nailing this concept, he spent his time helping other small business owners do the same. Steve’s been investing in property since 2002, has a degree in Computing, and worked as a doctor in the NHS before quitting to focus full-time on sharing his systems and outsourcing Methodology with the world. He now lives in Sweden and runs his UK-based businesses remotely with the help of his team of Filipino and UK-based Virtual Assistants.
Most business owners are overwhelmed because they don’t know how to create systems or get the right help.
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