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North American car manufacturing leaders never truly understood W. Edwards Deming until it was too late. Dr. Deming was the quality guru that North American turned away. Japan believed. Japan prospered. Japanese car manufacturers are becoming the world leaders in one of the world's dominant industries. Is your company at the same tipping point when it relates to sustainability? Is the sky the [...]

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Does someone in your business ever-so-often ask, "Whatever happened to (fill in the name) and how come he doesn't shop with us any more? Several surveys asking this same question were taken through the years by (but not limited to) the American Society for Quality Control, the Harvard Business Review, U S News & World Report -- even the Swedish Post Office titled "Satsa pa kunden" ("Focus on [...]

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Organizational design is ensuring that you have the proper organizational structure to carry out the strategy. The next step is the selection and development of people to work within the organizational structure. With current talent shortages that are becoming more acute every year companies will falter badly if they make too many mistakes by selecting key people who do not posses the cognitive [...]

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In these more challenging times, it is important to assess whether your business has the financial resources to weather the impending storm (or at least an economic slow down). Assess whether each of the sources of financing that is currently being used is likely to agree to an increase in your limit and if there is an increase possible make arrangements for it now. Remember that bankers (and many[...]

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Tony Collier (not his real name) ran a very successful manufacturing organization. He had been in business for 12 years and the business had successfully negotiated some troubling times in the first three years, and in years 7 - 10. For the last two years, business had been expanding quite aggressively, albeit with only two customers. Both these customers were recently purchased by US competitors,[...]

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How can you use key performance indicators (KPI) to measure and help run your business? If you regularly report and investigate fluctuations in the KPIs in your business, you will often find problems sooner & find solutions faster than if you do not use this tool. Also, they are a great method of setting and measuring objectives for improvement by enabling the business to focus on areas that [...]

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In Search of Blue Oceans of Profitability and Growth At a recent conference, Frank O'Dea the co-founder of Second Cup and PROSHRED, described the tremendous growth and profitability that both companies underwent when they stumbled onto blue ocean strategy concepts that were later portrayed in the million copies sold business book "Blue Ocean Strategy- How to Create Uncontested Market Space and [...]

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The Inglis Story: How It Became the Number One Appliance Company in Canada In a recently published book called "Organization Design, Levels of Work and Human Capability", one of the chapters describes how Inglis, the appliance company, grew by 33% in a flat market by implementing sound organizational design practices to achieve: The right organizational structure. The right people. The[...]

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Whenever I speak to people about marketing their businesses there is one question that I always ask them: "How many ways are there to market your business?" OR, if said another way, "How many marketing tactics are there?" Then, the next question is: "How many have you tried?" Inevitably, the number that is mentioned is approximately 5 – 10 different tactics. And the number that most people have [...]

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Many companies are starting the year-end process at this time and there are ways to manage the charges that your external accountant charges for his services. Often the most effective way is to ensure that you and your staff do as much of the work as possible to prepare for the essential tasks that he has to do him/herself. Ask your public accountant what you and your staff are capable of doing to[...]

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