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Am I the only one who thinks this whole thread is focusing on the things that won't actually make a huge difference in bottom line profit?<br />
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You keep adding more and more complication for employees to follow. Who gives a flying f*ck about having employees clean bathrooms? They should be working on making you money! Have a cleaning lady clean the bathrooms.<br />
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Maybe I'd have to actually see you guys in action but to me this just seems like you're jerking yourself off trying to be Toyota.<br />
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Your posts on this thread are chock-full of corporate platitudes like "The goal: empowering all of my employees to be leaders, and to take ownership of their work."<br />
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Maybe you're right, but I think you're looking at the trees not the forest. <br />
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Any single item he has mentioned so far won't make a huge difference to bottom line profit. That's true (I think). These are little improvements. At first glance, this feels like he's violating the 80/20 rule of business.<br />
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But little improvements add up.<br />
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And what he's doing is training his people to see these little improvements. <br />
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Over time, as they continue to improve this ability, I'm sure they'll find big improvements too. I mean they're just getting started.<br />
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Not to mention the effect on company culture. People who feel like they are able to contribute to improvement are much more satisfied with their workplace. They tend to work more efficiently and harder and exhibit higher job satisfaction.<br />
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I think you do lawn care, right? Imagine if your guys did enough little improvements to how they store gear on the truck, what kind of gear they used, how they they approach the work, optimized the routes they take, and by being empowered, they gave a little extra on each job instead of just loafing it, and all these little improvements saved them enough time to enable them to do one extra job a day. 240 extra jobs per year. Per crew. <br />
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The effect on your bottom line wouldn't be instant. It's gradual improvement. But the end result would be pretty obvious. You can sign more customers, without increasing your labor cost.<br />
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I think the bathroom point will always be a sticking point for some people on this thread. But if his team has excess man hours available, then hiring a cleaning lady doesn't improve the bottom line right now. <br />
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The other thing that isn't mentioned about the bathrooms is this. Why do people feel like it's okay to make the bathrooms a mess in the first place? Anyways...<br />
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Having a culture of keeping something clean and cleaning up after yourself is so much more efficient. Then you just need someone to disinfect things once a day, and that should go pretty quickly. <br />
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And don't forget, this guy from time to time raises capital. When an investor comes to tour his facility, do you think you'll get the capital if it's all messy everywhere and people look worn down and unhappy? Or do you think he can get more money if his people know what their jobs are, talk about the improvements they've made to the place, and the entire place is running like a happy well-oiled machine. And it's clean.<br />
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This new culture could make the difference between him actually getting capital or not getting capital. A clean efficient workplace also speaks to his ability as a leader and entrepreneur. That gives an investor more confidence.<br />
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And if someday he wants to sell this thing? He's going to fetch more money by having a more efficient company. <br />
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Having better processes in one reason why smaller competitors get acquired by bigger competitors. <br />
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In the end, one way or another, I think this direction he's taking will no doubt put more money in his pocket.</div>
