How To Breed An Innovative Business Idea — #17 of 31 Proven Skills [Research]
Skill #17: Squeeze Process Resources to Deliver a Better Result
A less obvious skill that emerges from an appreciation of the inter-dependency of steps in a process is one that concentrates on the inherent quality of each step. This ‘quality’ is defined according to how variable a process step is. Simply put, the definition identifies the range of possible outcomes from a single process step and, viewed numerically, the goal is to minimize the range of possibilities as much as possible. The narrower the range of each step, the better the output of any process
Skill #17 Squeeze Process Resources to Deliver a Better Result is one of four skills that recognize that virtually everything we do is achieved by means of a ‘process’ and that understanding how processes work opens up very reliable innovative opportunities. This is because the series of steps or events (stages) that constitute a process is subject to mathematical laws. Each stage is dependent on the stage that precedes it and, in turn, affects the stage that succeeds it. It is not often that we can know for certain that an innovative initiative will succeed but this is possible if we manage any process as a series of dependent stages.
Earlier we saw that Skill #15 delivers an innovative result by exploiting the fact that eliminating one or more stages from a process substantially improves the final result. Skill #16 delivers an innovative result by recognizing that, as all stages have an effect on all subsequent stages, the more excellent the first stage, the better the final result.
Skill #17 Squeeze Process Resources to Deliver a Better Result recognizes another truth about dependent processes: the higher the quality of every stage in a process, the more superlative will be the value of whatever it is that the process is designed to achieve.
Ensuring that every stage is of high quality is not conceptually difficult to envisage. It involves a practical view that seeks to make the range from the best to the worst that each stage can produce as narrow as possible. Each stage must be ‘squeezed’ so that it performs its assigned task with the minimum variation around what it does ‘on average’.
Enough of the theory. Time to illustrate.
Consumer demand in most markets is variable i.e., for most suppliers of goods and services, the number of orders they receive is not identical each day. Some days an unusually high level of orders is received. On some other days, an unusually low level of orders is received. Most days, the level of orders sits around what would be an average quantity for a business. Although normal, the degree of variation can pose major problems for a business.
For instance, a home builder must regularly deal with dissatisfied customers because their home completion is late due to the builder having too many ‘completions’ fall in the same month. They innovate to resolve this. By looking early in the home-building process, and particularly at the order-taking stage, the home builder restricts the new sales that it accepts each month and subsequently regulates the number of homes passing through each progress stage until completion. By ‘squeezing’ orders taken into a narrow monthly band, achieving promised completion dates then occurs with commendable consistency.
[Skill #17 Squeeze Process Resources to Deliver a Better Result is one of 31 innovative skills that have emerged from the study of thousands of successful business ideas that contain a distinctive characteristic — a small investment of effort produces a disproportionately beneficial result. I refer to such ideas as Sebirs. Sebir is a loose acronym for Small effort — big result.]
Other Examples of Squeezing a Process Resource to Deliver a Better Result*
A fertile business area for this ‘squeezing’ aspect of Skill #17 is in the management of inventory, particularly if it is combined with Skill #16, which gives priority to tackling the early stages of a process. Consider an example from the manufacture of fashion clothing where variety can quickly become physically uncontrollable, a serious problem faced by a fashion brand supplier of knitted sweaters. This firm acts to avert the harmful buildup of stock by having all sweaters produced in white to begin with. Later, when demand reflects exact customer preferences, the sweaters are dyed locally in the colors required. Squeezing an early stage of its supply chain process successfully preempts the buildup of inventories to expensive and troublesome levels.
A church that conducts multiple services on Sundays must often confront the problem of overcrowding in some services. They decide to experiment with different service commencement times, carefully recording attendance numbers and the variability around specific timetables. This enables them to adopt a schedule that distributes attendances most evenly. The new times have the effect of compressing actual attendance numbers at each service to within a narrow band ensuring that the periodic overcrowding problem with its attendant issues is largely overcome.
An insightful view of the mechanics of processes and how process steps or events can be manipulated to influence the outcome of any process is hugely beneficial from an innovating point of view. One valuable possibility that this understanding leads to is ensuring that the stages of any process are as tight as possible. The greater the reduction in the variation that is physically achieved at each stage, the better the process result … guaranteed.
Takeaway
*More than 1 million categorized, innovative business ideas can be searched on Sebir.com
