Kent Business Solutions
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By: Kathy Kent Toney, CEO & Founder of Kent Business Solutions  Image by Freepik As a business leader, have you ever experienced significant shortfalls with your customers that resulted in poor reviews or lost business? If this rings true for you, there is a solution that can prevent this from happening again—Voice of the Customer (VOC). It’s an invaluable tool for any business leader’s toolbox! Here's a great example of how one of my amazing clients turned a potentially harmful situation into a multi-million dollar outcome using VOC. The Problem This local manufacturer didn't have a standard process for gathering customer requirements to ensure proper incorporation before new product development efforts started nor to monitor them continually during the process. This problem became very evident when the following scenario happened. My client had recently established an innovation arm of their business for developing smart technology products. One day, they called upon an electrical contractor to install a prototype of their first new innovative product at a work site. Much to my client's chagrin, the contractor informed them that they had made a massive mistake in the housing of the product, making it non-functional in its current state. This mistake could have caused ALL kinds of serious issues, especially if they had to go back through a lengthy UL approval process. Thankfully, that wasn't the case! The Solution That's when the CEO decided to bring me in to develop a new approach they could integrate into their product development process. We got right to work! I teamed with them to create "how-to kits" for each different VOC type: surveys, focus groups, and customer visits, to name a few. Then we integrated the how-to kits into different phases of their product development process. That way, end users would know how to gather customer feedback at the correct times and places. Not only that, the process helped to ensure they incorporated that feedback into developing products. The Results The outcome was excellent! The first new product that used the VOC process experienced the following:
My client has been thrilled with the results! Another great thing about this process is that it's a drop-in system that can be easily adapted to other product development processes and even works for service delivery models. This aspect can benefit a company, allowing quicker and less costly implementations. And when it comes to process deployments, who doesn't want that? # # # As a "thank you" for reading my blog, here's a freebie I'd like to share with those of you who develop products—a Product Development Checklist. If you're new in this space, it can start you down the road of creating such a process or help you improve the one you already have. If you have a mature approach, feel free to adapt any new insights to improve your current process. Either way, I'd love to have you check it out! Just click the button below to download it.
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By: Kathy Kent Toney, CEO & Founder of Kent Business Solutions  Image by Kampus Productions on Pexels Consultants over the years have earned a bad rap. One thing I've heard frequently is this: Consultants are too expensive, and their engagements don't often empower businesses with self-sufficiency when they leave the engagement. No wonder businesses hesitate to hire consultants! Consultants love a steady stream of income. But that's not a good thing when they do this at the expense of businesses by keeping their fingers in the proverbial pie. I’m illustrating this point because it details a need most customers and clients crave--empowerment to solve their issues and chart their journeys. They don't want to keep hiring consultants to solve their challenges. Ultimately, if consultants or any business can build self-sufficiency as a part of their products and services, they'll deliver incredible customer value! Here are two examples of how I do this with my clients. The first one involved developing a Scrum process for a local manufacturer. The second engagement involved creating a Voice of the Customer process for another local manufacturer. In both instances, I ensured they had all the necessary tools, procedures, and an action item list that contained all outstanding items requiring attention upon my exit. Both projects were a resounding success, and neither client needed to call me back to help solve any challenges related to their particular projects. One CEO said he would hire me again because I empowered them to chart their destinies, which differentiated me from other consultants with whom he had previously worked. I'm giving you these examples because two principles apply, even if you're not a consulting company. Here are two things you can do to build self-sufficiency with your customers: Ensure Everything They Need to be Successful-- During Their Buyer Journey Your buyer journey should be a seamless experience for your customers or clients. Anything you can do to make the process a pleasant experience for them is certainly beneficial. Automated tools ensure customer interactions happen when needed, and the right system can deliver information at the right time to the right people. After the Engagement is Over Ensure your how-to guides or any other information they need to succeed are thorough and easy to understand. If that doesn't happen, your customer service agents could receive too many calls, and your customers might get frustrated. Ultimately, the idea is to empower your customers or clients throughout the process. When businesses can do this, they'll deliver incredible value to their customers or clients! And who doesn't want that? # # # Speaking of empowering your customers, workflow automation tools excel at that. Their use enables employees to engage in higher-level functions by removing mundane tasks so that these tasks no longer consume countless hours of their valuable time. In our best-selling book, No-Nonsense Digital Transformation, Michael Cantu and I discuss this concept extensively. It provides a step-by-step roadmap on how to prepare for and implement digital transformation initiatives in your business. If you’re interested in learning more, click the button below! By: Kathy Kent Toney, CEO & Founder of Kent Business Solutions  Image by jcomp on Freepik As business leaders, we've heard of disastrous stories of companies that have experienced digital transformation failures. Countless companies begin their transformation journeys with high hopes and grand plans yet often don't achieve their goals. But then, there's another end of the spectrum where companies know projects will fail from the beginning! Check this out: a series of studies conducted by several heavy hitters (the likes of McKinsey, Oxford University, and KPMG) revealed that 70% of all respondents said they knew an IT project they were about to start would fail from the onset. With all these grim realities, how does a business leader ensure success from the onset? One way to do it is to prevent those things that could go wrong. Along those lines, here are the three top reasons why digital transformation initiatives fail, all from a people perspective: 1. Wrong Mindsets Good mojo flows down from the top of an organization, and if the CEO isn't supportive of transformative IT initiatives, success will be hard to achieve. So it's essential to have support from the top. Also, when companies continue to keep employees on board who are resistant to change and can sabotage change efforts, this can cause problems. 2. Wrong Culture IT projects will fail if an organization has too many siloed departments and minimal collaboration. It's essential to establish an atmosphere of cooperation. When an organization can foster an attitude that everyone can win with the proposed new technology, that's a game-changer. Without effective change management systems along those lines, end-user acceptance will suffer. Finally, if management does a poor job of encouraging an environment where team members are free to be themselves and can voice feedback without repercussions, chances for success are minimized. 3. Wrong Talent Not having the right talent mix for your team can impede your efforts. For instance, a team leader who doesn't do a good job assessing their internal human capital and filling skill gaps will suffer in the end. Also, when team leaders don't include team members during the interview process with prospective hires, the potential for friction in the team increases. You want to ensure new members can easily integrate into the team. One undervalued idea is to have highly skilled team members who have experienced firsthand failed initiatives. That way, they can bring their expertise and knowledge of what doesn't work on projects. I've only scratched the surface of three possible reasons digital transformation efforts can fail, all from the people side of things. So, there's so much more to learn! Michael Cantu and I detail what it takes to ensure project success in our best-selling Amazon book, No-Nonsense Digital Transformation. If you're interested in learning more, click the button below! By: Kathy Kent Toney, CEO & Founder of Kent Business Solutions  Image by rawpixels.com on Freepik Many companies' big ideas are often lost in a sea of competitive offerings that outperform them in the market. If that's you, here are seven tips to help your organization become more innovative. 1. Choose and Commit to an Innovation Path There are three types of innovation: Product, Process, and Business Model. Process is the least sexy of the three but is the easiest to tackle first and can reap great dividends. It can range from updating a cumbersome sales process to revamping your assembly line. Such improvements can immediately capture benefits in speed-to-market and increased profitability. Here's a great article that explains these concepts in greater detail. 2. Plan for Innovation As we all know, unless you plan to do something, it most likely won't happen. Think about including targets for new products and services in your business plan. Make innovation a part of everyone's yearly goals. It's well-known that if you don't measure it, it most likely won't happen. 3. Mobilize Your Employees Try the following ideas to spark innovation with your most valued resource! Be Approachable & Accessible For your employees to be genuinely innovative, senior leaders and managers must regularly interact with their teams. Being approachable and accessible makes all the difference in the world. Inspire your Employees to Dream What does innovation look like to your employees? Inspire a culture of openness to new ideas. Make Innovation the Norm Take it one step further—let workers know how much you value their ideas. Make innovation a part of your company values. Talk it up during staff get-togethers. Hold regular ideation sessions. Reward Innovative Ideas Take it up one more notch--reward, not just recognize, employees for innovative ideas. Allow for More Margin One great way to reward employees that deserves its own category is by allowing more time for creative thinking. 4. Gather Feedback from Your Customers There are many ways to do this: listen to customer complaints, interview/survey them, run a contest for new product ideas, or monitor social media posts. Then consolidate feedback as a basis for your innovation efforts. Most importantly, act on what you discover! 5. Collaborate Is there another company you can collaborate with that provides excellent synergy? You can go where you can't go alone through such a partnership. It's essential, however, to have a similar philosophy to go along with different skills. 6. Minimize or Maximize If something is a standard in the industry, try minimizing or maximizing it. Starbucks maximized price and customer experience. Southwest minimized standard offerings, like serving meals. At the same time, they maximized customer service. It is better to be different than to be better. 7. Bring in Outside Help If your company needs increased bandwidth, contract with someone for identified projects, or if you need help to determine where to start, think about bringing someone in who is skilled in innovation consulting. What innovation efforts have worked for you? I'd love to hear what has helped your company to be more innovative! Or, if you're currently experiencing problems in this area, I'd love to brainstorm some ideas of where you could improve your profitability and increase innovation. Click the button below to schedule a time, and we'll get something on the calendar! By: Kathy Kent Toney, CEO & Founder of Kent Business Solutions  Image by jcomp on Freepik With all the leadership books that exist, sometimes it can be challenging to know which book to read next! For that reason, it can be helpful to up your leadership game through reading bite-size chunks of information. If you’re in this boat, here are six things you can do to increase your leadership influence: 1. Expand Your Knowledge Base It’s easy to get lackadaisical when it comes to learning. Some leaders may feel complacent and don't feel the need to grow anymore. This scenario can be the case if leaders have been in their roles for a long time. If this is the case, the best thing to do is decide to keep learning, push through the resistance, and get growing! 2. Take a Genuine Interest in Others Great leaders show care for others and their needs, which builds emotional equity amongst their peers and those they lead. Who doesn’t love to follow leaders who genuinely care about them? 3. Be Generous People remember leaders for their generosity, especially when their giving isn't required. And it doesn't even have to be money--gifts of time are invaluable as well. 4. Be Authentic People can spot a fake a mile away, yet so many are afraid to be themselves, thinking people won’t accept them if they show their true selves. They’d rather put on a mask instead. The best thing we can do is be ourselves, and if the true-you has rough edges, that’s okay. We all have them. To be imperfect is perfectly human. 5. Thrive During Tough Times We do have a choice on how we deal with hardship. It comes down to two things: either we choose to face challenges head-on, or by default, we allow adversity to eat away at our resilience and our ability to overcome. My advice? Choose wisely! 6. Embrace Servant Leadership Have the mindset that life isn't about us. It's about serving others, bringing value to everyone we meet, and leaving a legacy. In the end, if we can embrace these six qualities such that they become a part of who we are, our influence as a leader will grow, and who doesn’t want that? Speaking of influence, does your organization have the resources to grow your impact in the market, but you're not sure where to start? Often, the best way to do that is through improving the way your business runs. If that's you, I'm offering a FREE 30-minute consultation. This will be a great opportunity for us to brainstorm some ideas and then identify what areas to target for improvement. Click the button below to get started! By: Kathy Kent Toney, CEO & Founder of Kent Business Solutions  Image by Roy Harryman As a business leader, have you encountered situations where you weren’t sure how to encourage a good employee after a major failure to get them back on track? If so, I’d love to share with you some tips inspired by the Kansas City Chiefs' recent victory in the AFC Championship game. Their third trip to the Super Bowl in four years would not be possible without a handful of players who struggled for much of the season by turning it around in this game. 1. Don’t Give Up on Your Employees Rookie Skyy Moore started off the season returning kicks with little success. They pulled him from return duty yet kept working with him behind the scenes to improve. With multiple punt returners unavailable due to injuries, the coaches brought Skyy into a tie game to return a punt with less than a minute to go. Not only did he catch the ball, he ran it back for a big gain to put the Chiefs in great field position for the eventual game-winning field goal. Tip #1: After big failures, let your employees know you still believe in them. Give them guidance, or training if needed, in areas of weakness that can help prevent them from making similar mistakes again. 2. Continue to Cast a Vision for Their Future Kansas City's defense is loaded with rookies this season. KC’s coaches threw them into the fire, telling them they were going to be a big part of the team. Not surprisingly, these rookies made plenty of mistakes that resulted in numerous penalties and opponent touchdowns. But the coaches kept them in the fire, trusting they would eventually succeed. In the biggest game of the season, they did turn things around and came up with HUGE plays that directly contributed to the Chiefs winning the game. Tip #2: Continue to cast a vision of where you see your employees going despite any mistakes they make. And after big miscues, let them know you still want to help them on the growth journey you’ve started together. 3. Express Confidence in Their Ability to Succeed Harrison Butker is one of best kickers in the game; however, he’s had his worst season to date. Due to a sprained ankle, he missed three games, and when he returned, he missed a lot of field goals and extra points. With the game tied and a few seconds left on the clock, the Chiefs confidently sent Butker into the game to kick the game-winning field goal, and the rest is history. Tip #3: Let your employees know that any past failures they’ve had are in the past and that you have complete confidence in their ability to succeed. Speaking of overcoming failure, how many of you have had projects go south because of poor project management? That’s where I love to help! I excel in quickly organizing projects and rallying your teams to accomplish them in quick order with tremendous success. If you’re interested in learning more, I’d love to schedule a chat with you! Click the button below to get started. By: Kathy Kent Toney, CEO & Founder of Kent Business Solutions  Image by rawpixel.com on Freepik With constantly changing economic conditions, business leaders often encounter the daunting task of improving their organization's profitability. Some may not know where to start. A great way to do that is to optimize their organizations. Check out the following five steps an organization can focus on to optimize their organizations -- because who doesn't want to elevate their profitability? 1. Craft a Culture Employees Can Embrace According to McKinsey, companies with cultures ranking in the top quartile of the Organizational Health Index post a 60% higher return to shareholders and 200% higher than those in the bottom quartile. There's no easy formula for creating a great culture; doing this subject justice in a 500-word blog could prove quite challenging. The foundation starts with valuing each individual, giving them a voice in everyday matters, and creating an environment where employees love to come to work. Then, build from there. 2. Work Closely With Employees to Develop Goals They'll Support When business leaders establish top-level goals and all levels of the organization establish their goals in support of them, that's an excellent place to start. However, the employees have to buy into their plans. Executives must cast a vision of where the organization is heading and the employee's role in getting there. If employees don't connect to the big picture, productivity can suffer, and the organization's profitability could follow suit. 3. Make Effective Use of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) Successful organizations use KPIs to measure progress toward their goals. Even if you're currently using KPIs, you want them to tie directly to your most critical operations so you can stay on top of the progress toward your goals. You'll be alerted when measures are trending downward by monitoring your KPIs so that you can intervene more quickly with solutions. 4. Improve Your Processes Organizations with streamlined business processes experience reduced costs, increased revenue, and improved profitability. Take Merchants Insurance Group. After streamlining their Portfolio Management area operations, they improved on-time project delivery to 80% and achieved a 758% revenue growth in the first two months. For your operations, focus first on improving your processes, which are the most significant cost drivers and have the most time-consuming tasks. By doing so, you're likely to experience more significant gains on a shorter timetable. 5. Automate Your Processes When organizations automate their business processes, it's a powerful tool for reducing costs, improving productivity, and increasing profitability. It's common for productivity to increase by over 300% with workflow automation over previous processes. A great plan is to automate recently improved processes. Doing so can achieve even more significant cost reductions and productivity increases than process improvement alone. Speaking of automating processes, Michael Cantu's and my best-selling book on Amazon, No-Nonsense Digital Transformation, discusses the power of automating processes. Not only that, we dive deeper into how to transform cultures and encourage employee buy-in of organizational initiatives. So it isn't just for digital transformation fans! If you're interested in learning more, click the button below. By: Kathy Kent Toney, CEO & Founder of Kent Business Solutions  Image by KamranAydinov on Freepik As a business leader, have you and your team embarked on a carefully constructed business plan only to find it quickly unraveled as you executed it? To avoid this trap, here are five suggestions on how to ensure your plans lead to successful outcomes: 1. Bring Your Best to the Table When you develop a plan, include a broad range of opinions, expertise, and experience. In other words, your team's input is essential to plan success. Ensure that your team is included upfront in the planning process so that your plan will result in a well-rounded approach. 2. Develop Contingency Scenarios Even the best plans can go awry when unaccounted-for situations arise. That's why it's important to brainstorm multiple possibilities upfront to ensure your bases are covered if things don't go as you would have liked. A good formula to follow is IF THIS, DO THAT. When such an event occurs, consult with the team to decide which contingency plan would work best (when there are multiple options) and, if need be, adapt your choice to your circumstances. 3. Communicate Plan Changes When you experience changes to your plan, ensure that all your team members and affected stakeholders receive notice of such changes. Doing so will help prevent misunderstandings and potentially wasted effort spent on a previous version of the plan. 4. Create Avenues for Gathering Feedback and Data Make it easy for team members and stakeholders to give you feedback during plan execution so that you can make adjustments along the way. This will help ensure your path to success. Providing a forum for regular reviews where feedback is encouraged is a great way to do this. Monitoring progress through data collection as you execute the plan is also essential. Ensure that your data collection techniques are rigorous enough to ensure data integrity. 5. Plan for Regular Progress Reviews Having everyone on the same page is crucial for plan success. Ensure your team meets on at a pre-determined frequency, considering plan speed, complexity, scope, team availability, and size. The planned frequency and required attendance for particular team members for reviews can change later if the need to do so arises. Here's some good news: a great way to accomplish all these suggestions is through Scrum, a proven, best-practice approach. It just so happens that it's one of my passions! What is Scrum? In short, it's a streamlined way to manage projects. It allows for regular reviews with stakeholders and synergistic daily meetings (called Daily Scrums) that keep communication lines open amongst all team members. Plan changes can be made on the fly and quickly communicated to team members and stakeholders. Better yet, projects can often finish much faster than traditional approaches. You don't need to take my word for it! Click on the button below to download a case study about one of my clients. By: Kathy Kent Toney, CEO & Founder of Kent Business Solutions  As business leaders, we sometimes make big mistakes that can be hard to shake from our minds and consciousness. What steps can we take to turn things around? All-Pro Defense Tackle, Chris Jones of the Kansas City Chiefs, is a great role model for handling missteps and charting a path to success. He used the mistakes he made in a crucial game last year that ended their 2021-2022 Super Bowl run, miscues that he used as fuel to achieve tremendous success this season. In Chris Jones’ own words, “Last year stuck with me. I had two critical plays that I should have made that I missed (in the AFC Championship Game). We know how the game went.” Here are three things Chris did that we can use to turn our mistakes around for good. 1. Work With a Mentor After last year’s tough loss, the Chiefs brought in a new defensive line coach. Chris said about his coach: “Bringing him in as a mentor for me and a defensive line coach has completely [transformed] my game, whether it’s the run game or the pass rush.” As a result, he’s won two awards this season for being the best defensive tackle in the NFL. Steps You Can Take: If you need a mentor or coach, find one! Your connections can be an excellent source for referrals to outstanding individuals. And if you are already working with one, fully engaging in the relationship to help ensure accountability is a perfect thing to do. 2. Use Mistakes as a Motivator Chris didn’t let his past mistakes plague him; instead, he used them as motivation to improve. During the offseason, he worked diligently with his mentor to enhance one of his weaknesses (tackling runners). His hard work paid off—he achieved a career-high number of tackles against "the run." Steps You Can Take: Objectively evaluate what you could have done better and develop a plan to improve. And if you're still in a place of regret, decide to put the past behind you. If doing so is still a challenge, consider the possibility that you may need to forgive yourself for your mistakes, an often overlooked action we can take that can yield tremendous results. 3. Finish Well In Chris' own words, "It's not about how you start. It's about how you finish." The Chiefs' defense had its best season performance in their last game. They struggled much of the year due to an overhauled, inexperienced defense. But after playing 17 games together, they’re clicking, just in time to bring their best game forward as they head into the playoffs! Steps You Can Take: Keep building upon your plan to overcome and succeed. Work with your team to build consensus and cooperation so you're all on the same page for goal achievement. # # # Speaking about goal achievement, are you properly positioned for success in digitizing your organization? If you have questions in the area, check out Michael Cantu's and my best-selling book, No-Nonsense Digital Transformation. It provides a step-by-step roadmap for preparing for and implementing digital transformation initiatives in your business so you can help ensure success even before you start. If you’re interested in learning more, click the button below! By: Kathy Kent Toney, CEO & Founder of Kent Business Solutions  Image by Freepik With the start of a new year, most organizations' leadership are looking for ways to decrease costs and increase revenue. One way to go about that is to eliminate waste in their operations.
Employees ultimately want to do the same thing. They don't want to deal with inefficiencies that waste their time. What to do? Streamline your workflows with Lean tools. For those of you unfamiliar with Lean, here’s a simple definition: The use of Lean eliminates waste in manufacturing and office processes. It also creates more value for customers while using fewer resources. Doing so lowers costs. But those aren't the only benefits. Streamlined processes also reduce employee frustration. Through Lean activities, employees help develop the solution. Since they are involved firsthand, this often brings a greater sense of engagement and job satisfaction. Reduced costs and more engaged employees ultimately contribute to greater profitability. And what company doesn't want that? You don't need to take my word for it. Here's an example of a successful Lean implementation in which my colleague was involved. Before they started the project, this Kansas City manufacturer recorded $18M in annual sales and employed 100 employees. Two years after their Lean implementation, they experienced these results:
Companies that embrace Lean principles aren’t the only ones to reap the benefits—customers do as well. When companies go Lean, customers experience higher satisfaction and increased product quality. A fundamental tenet of Lean is ensuring that only value-added activities occur regularly for which a customer would be willing to pay. You may think: "these benefits are all good, but I don't work on a factory floor. Here’s some good news: any organization or discipline can benefit from using Lean. Check out this video to see how Lean can help Sales and Marketing! Are you interested in learning more? Here are some tips on starting a Lean-thinking attitude in your organization. If you'd like to explore what Lean or other process improvement approaches can do for your organization, I'm offering a free ½ hour Discovery Call. I'd love to discuss any questions about Lean or any challenges you are experiencing! |
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