Feedback is essential for knowing what you may need to change.
One of the key aspects to my small biz operating system is implementing mechanisms to
- collect
- analyze
- act on
feedback from
- customers
- suppliers
- employees
Customer feedback can be elicited from:
- emails
- phone conversations
- interactions
- surveys
- submissions/requests
These help you know how the market is shifting, new needs, possible future strategies.
Supplier feedback can be elicited from:
- quality issues
- root cause meetings
- emails
- site visits
- audits
- surveys
These help you can better utilize your supply base, help them make more money/margin, collaborate, reduce errors, & create a better partnership
Employee feedback can be two fold (and both should be collected via separate mechanisms): 1. Ideas / Improvements 2. Problems
The best ideas come from those closest to the action. There is no way around this. Find a way to capture it instead of thinking you have all the answers
Take your improvements and ideas:
- Collect these,
- aggregate them,
- hold town halls or meetings around them,
- find small teams to experiment and implement them.
Have a separate method to collect problems.
I have found that when you combine these into "Employee feedback", you end only getting complaints. It becomes an anonymous way to report rather than ideate.
When it comes to reported problems, the feedback loop on these should be almost immediate. Not the action, as much as the receipt and consideration.
Show the company that you care.
Reward those who self report problems to make the company better.
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This shows up in business models and strategy all the time.
Trying to get all customers who might buy your product is a sure way to get almost none of them.
Starting with customer motives can help isolate a winning strategy
If the customer you want to serve has many options, doesn't care about quality, and has the means to acquire market information (know all prices), you are serving a cost-focused customer
This means...
... your marketing is focused on how you are cheaper than elsewhere.
Your operational strategy is to run as lean as possible.
Your sourcing and procurement are looking for consolidation and discounts wherever possible.
Proximity is a key ingredient in streamlining anything.
Everything has a switching cost. The closer two things are, generally, the lower the switching cost.
Here are some business ways to use this idea, and some alternative ways to think about "proximity".
1. Locational Proximity
The obvious one is how close one task is to another. The closer you can put similar or consecutive tasks, the faster they can be performed using fewer resources.
2. Similarity Proximity
When looking to streamline a process, put like pieces together.
If entering invoices, enter info related to the payment or in an adjacent screen at the same time... even if not needed until a later step.
Most small businesses are family affairs. Even if its just the owner with no other family. There are emotions, family problems, ego-tied actions, and more.
These businesses are great businesses... but be ready. Here are few thoughts to help worker/acquirers in these businesses
1. 70%+ of owner net worth is the business itself.
They feel a lost customer or sale, a mispriced item, a wrong margin, a bad review, or any negative hit as a threat to their financial security and future well-being.
The thought "what if this continues" is always there
2. Owners see the success of the business as their personal success. Some take it to identity.
Realize, when you are talking about the business, you are talking about a piece of themselves, not just an asset they own.
Its more like discussing their heart than their car.