Building Lean Companies: How to Keep Companies Profitable as They Grow

Lean means doing more with less. That's why lean management supports green thinking and vice versa. Nonetheless, in most companies, economic and environmental continuous improvement are separate organisational silos and sometimes even come into conflict with each other. This is one of the biggest opportunities missed across most industries.

Building Lean Companies - How to Keep Companies Profitable as They Grow (Paperback)

Some companies are using lean and green as simultaneous sources of improvement in various sectors of industry — from automotive and retail to textile and brewing. The size of the opportunity is enormous.

It suggests that one of the biggest levers for delivering this opportunity is "increased efficiency through management and behavioural change" — in other words, lean and green management. In my experience, this is conservative: Some 47 studies from the likes of the Economist Intelligence Unit, Goldman Sachs, AT Kearney, Deloitte, MIT Sloan, Harvard and others show that companies that commit to such aspirational goals as zero waste, zero harmful emissions, and zero use of non-renewable resources are financially outperforming their competitors. Unaddressed, this will double by Here is an example.

A couple of months ago I worked with one of the largest sandwich factories in the world. A team of great men and women engaged in a programme to reduce physical waste using problem solving techniques. The results were staggering. No one expected to see nearly 1, tonnes of waste prevented in just a few weeks in a very mature industry. Add to that, they also saved 9m litres of water from going down the drain every year with interesting financial benefits. Techniques for Increasing Profits and Sustainability.

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Show 25 25 50 All. Just because you have a great idea does not mean the market is going to agree. You already listed out your assumptions in the Lean Canvas exercise above. Testing your idea rigorously is the best way to reduce startup risks. Here are a couple ways to begin:.

You can find out a lot from these interviews. The goal of a prototype is to deliver the bare minimum product that meets the highest pain point of your customer. Keep it inexpensive at this point. The goal here is to get user feedback so you can change the product. The most important thing at this stage is to keep an open mind.

The customers may not share your vision—you need to meet them where they live. A good example of this is Van Barker, who spent decades in corporate America working for companies like Hewlett Packard and Pepsico before founding Yardstash, an outdoor bike storage company, as a side project.

For Van, the prototype process allowed him to significantly improve the product. We were able to use the feedback to improve the quality, and we changed the design to make the units easier to assemble. The next design cost less to make as well. Surveys are a great way to reach hundreds or even thousands of prospects. Tools like SurveyMonkey make it super easy to run a survey and get analysis of the results. Use a 5 point or 7 point scale, so respondents can answer on a range.

12 Steps: Starting A Business While Working Full Time

It makes it MUCH easier to find patterns in the answers. Use the Interactivity and Reach of Internet: It is pretty easy to set up a basic web site and test your concept very inexpensively on real live prospects. You can use an inexpensive product like LeadPages to set up a few different descriptions and see which ones customers like more.

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You should also use Google Adwords to see if people are using Google to search for answers related to your startup. This is a good sign, because it means there are customers out there for you. You can test advertising on AdWords or Facebook to see if you can get consumers to click. All of us have hobbies like cooking, gardening, Yoga, reading, dancing, etc. To turn your idea into a thriving business, you need to set goals for your startup and hold yourself accountable to them.

Plan out your next steps, with dates and specifics as best you can. I get it- you have a busy life with a job, family, kids, book club, etc. It is simply way too easy to put off the work on your business until tomorrow. I am NOT suggesting that you try to create a detailed plan for everything for months and months. But knowing the next few steps, and forcing yourself to get it done on a time schedule, will create positive momentum and also will create clarity about the steps that follow.

Your natural instinct might be to save aggressively in preparation for the time when you are full-time on your startup and you have a much lower income. Certainly many financial experts will tell you to do that. I think about it a little differently. I think you should take any extra money you have and invest it in your startup. Spend some money on Google Adwords and start building an email list. Get some inventory of your new product. Get professional business cards. Hire a virtual administrator. But small investments to get your business moving faster—generating more revenue, building your network, getting good legal counsel or patent protection, setting the stage for this business to be viable and support you and your dreams- these are good investments.

Not so good investments: Most other things that you can avoid, penny pinch on, or defer. If you have done your homework and spoken with enough customers, you will find customers willing to pay you for your MVP or a variant of it. Paying customers changes everything.

Seven hallmarks of superior marketing and sales capabilities

You might be able to use your early customers as testimonials. They might even refer you to other prospects. Use the fact that you still have a job as fuel to network like crazy. Having a job is great, because you interact regularly with other employees, customers, vendors, even competitors. Network inside the company as well as outside. Try to meet people who can be potential employees, potential customers, potential contractors, potential advisors and mentors, and potential investors.

These connections are all potentially valuable. You know how it goes with networking: Do not overlook the idea of finding mentors now, before you need them. Those could be formal relationships, or they could simply be people you will call when you have a question that they can answer. When I was a venture capitalist, we used to see founders with good ideas who wanted investment so they could quit their jobs and pursue their business.

I understand the logic, it makes sense. Investors almost always want to see you working full time on the business so they think you are maximizing their chance to get a return on their investment. Even if you could get investors interested, your lack of traction would put a very low value on your company at this point. So low that you would need to give up a very large piece to the investors. Finally, there is your time to consider.

Building marketing and sales capabilities to beat the market | McKinsey

The process takes much longer than that to identify the right investors, to pitch them, and to go through their due diligence process. You are much better off at this point using that investment in time to move your business forward.

If you have other commitments, like kids or a spouse, it can feel like triple duty. Your time is your most valuable resource right now, so use it wisely. The reality is that this might be the time to put some things on the back burner. For these next six months, you might not be able to coach soccer, or take a long vacation, or do your regular poker night or book club. If you find yourself getting stuck, as many of us do, just try to keep things moving.

You can get yourself unstuck by only focusing on the next step.