Waste can come in many forms and from a variety of places in your organization. By the time you are trying to cut costs by reducing the amount you spend on paper towels just to make ends meet, it is too late. It is time to hang up that paper towel.
Entrepreneurs spend most of their day putting out fires and when the rest of us get to go home, they start to do the real work. The best way out of this is to eliminate your biggest problem using a Pareto chart. Then when the bulk of your time is freed up, elaminate your next biggest problem, and then your next biggest problem until you maximize your time.
Another great visual tool to help you see wasted steps in a process is a Process flow diagram. Seeing a process layed out in front of you will often help you see the obvious waste you can immediately cut out. This tool will also help you define what you are doing. If you cannot define what you are doing, then you don’t know what you are doing.
Use these steps to move from putting out fires, to obtaining more of the most valuable resource you have. Your time.
-Brandon
Solving Citizen 