As a passionate and motivated home entrepreneur, you no doubt consciously seek out information on how to run a successful and profitable home business whenever possible. If however you don’t, then you are making a big mistake. Businesses don’t grow on their own; home entrepreneurs require focus, and desire to be the best in their class… and of course they need to offer great product/service to get the attention of the market.
Process driven productivity is an approach to running managing your time as productively, efficiently and effectively as possible, and still allowing you to deliver maximum value to your customers at a minimum effort/cost to you.
You see, what’s missing in most ‘traditional’ approaches to business entrepreneurial teaching is the aspect of continuous improvement. Most programs, books and literature show you how to create a business plan, find financing, hire employees, and market your product. These are all very important aspects of creating and running a business… but they don’t teach you how to run the best business possible.
Now, I don’t know what business you are in or what product/service you offer. You may sell information products online or you may give manicures to your friends and neighbors in your basement. That really doesn’t matter given what I am trying to teach you here. You see, these principles focus on the business process and not on the business product.
Every product/service requires a process to transform it from an idea in your head to something of value in the eyes of your customers. And your productivity, efficiency and overall effectiveness determine how successfully you will be at transforming that product/service into something the customer will value. This transformation is captured in what’s known as the Value Stream.
A concept know as Lean Thinking focuses on the relentless elimination of waste in your business. Waste represents all of the non-value added steps that are part of the end product you provide to your customers. This waste is either passed on to the customer as an added cost for product development, or it is absorbed by you. In either case, it is a waste that needs to be addressed.
Sidebar: What is Lean? Lean Thinking provides both a business strategy and an implementation toolset. The Lean strategy is to reduce cycle time which will cause the fundamental problems to surface (waste) and to target them for elimination. The Lean tools help us to “see” the waste and provide methods to eliminate it. The result is an efficient business that delivers maximum value to the customer.
The following 7 principles can help drive your home business to higher levels of performance and financial success.
1. The Principle of Preparation - organizing your environment and yourself.
2. The Principle of Productivity - avoiding multi-tasking and being productive, efficient and effective.
3. The Principle of Practice - developing routines and standard operations for your business processes.
4. The Principle of Prioritization - focus on your core strengths and outsourcing activities for efficiency.
5. The Principle of Prevention - improving quality and control by error-proofing your business.
6. The Principle of Prediction - visually monitoring progress with performance metrics.
7. The Principle of Performance - overcoming constraints to improve personal and business performance.
These principles are fundamental to your success in ‘doing more with less’ in the planning, execution and control of your home business operations. Every home entrepreneur must understand his/her limitations in terms of resources. You cannot be everything to everybody at the same time. Multi-tasking, as popular as it is today, is evil.
Gaining an understanding of these 7 principles will help home entrepreneurs become more productive, efficient and effective in their day to day operations of their home business. That means you will be able to do more with your limited resources and thus generate more revenue in your business.
