The Automation Audit

There is a term in Japan called Kaizen.

It's a philosophy that emphasises making small, incremental changes to processes to achieve significant long-term gains in performance.

Hailing from the manufacturing world, Kaizen makes manual labour tasks more efficient, e.g, placing a benchtop with one component closer to the assembly line reduces the number of steps needed to grab that component.

We’ve introduced a 5-minute audit following the Kaizen process for the knowledge work that we do at K&J to identify the following:

• The three biggest time sucks from the previous week

• What part of these time sucks could be automated

• The one task that a team member completed that they believe added the most value to our clients

• The one task they believed added the most value to the business

After getting the results of these questions, I’ve spotted a few trends:

• We do a lot of manual work that needs tighter processes - essentially, we’re wasting time & money in certain places
  

• Tasks that I believed took only 30 minutes actually required hours to complete - I’m misunderstanding the time demands of our team
  

• Things that people believe are adding value to the business are different to where I think they are adding value to the business - I’m not communicating where the value lies in the roles they are playing in our business

Co-author Rhys said this to me a couple of weeks back.

This weekly audit allows our business to get closer to this outcome.

Great companies get everyone rowing in the same direction, faster and more efficiently week on week.

Try using these questions this week to see if your business is doing this.

You can copy them here.

Writing Clearly

In David Deutsch's book Beyond Infinity, he shares an interesting idea called reach.

Imagine you're trying to build a LEGO castle.

At first, you only know how to build a little wall. But then you get an idea: What if I stack the pieces like this? You try it, and suddenly you can build towers too.

David Deutsch's idea of "reach" is this:

It’s like saying:

Like Einstein's universal theory of relativity, certain skills apply universally to business, while others are virtually useless.

Knowing how to file a GST return, for example, has a single use-case. Writing clearly, on the other hand, touches every part of a business.

Workflows. Cold emails. Job ads. Team updates. Every one of them benefits from writing clearly.

When I advertised for a client support officer for Gravy on Seek we received 309 applications. Ten times the number similar jobs fetch.

With that said, there are a few things you can do to write clearly, explained brilliantly in this blog about writing by Scott Adams:

"I went from being a bad writer to a good writer after taking a one-day course in “business writing.” I couldn’t believe how simple it was. I’ll tell you the main tricks here so you don’t have to waste a day in class.

Business writing is about clarity and persuasion.

The main technique is keeping things simple.

Simple writing is persuasive.

A good argument in five sentences will sway more people than a brilliant argument in a hundred sentences. Don’t fight it.

Simple means getting rid of extra words.

Don’t write, “He was very happy” when you can write “He was happy.”

You think the word “very” adds something. It doesn’t. Prune your sentences.

Humor writing is a lot like business writing. It needs to be simple. The main difference is in the choice of words. For humor, don’t say “drink” when you can say “swill.”

Your first sentence needs to grab the reader. Go back and read my first sentence to this post. I rewrote it a dozen times. It makes you curious. That’s the key.

Write short sentences. Avoid putting multiple thoughts in one sentence. Readers aren’t as smart as you’d think.

Learn how brains organize ideas. Readers comprehend “the boy hit the ball” quicker than “the ball was hit by the boy.”

Both sentences mean the same, but it’s easier to imagine the object (the boy) before the action (the hitting).

All brains work that way. (Notice I didn’t say, “That is the way all brains work”?)

That’s it.

You just learned 80% of the rules of good writing. You’re welcome."

If you are writing today, ask yourself, “How could I simplify this for the person receiving this message?”