Empowered Teams Follow Through

I recently reviewed the results that followed our first Operation QIC^® workshop, and the numbers are astounding!  Would you like to experience significant financial success in your business? Read on to learn what happened in my business, and how you can use the same principles to grow your business.

For the next three years following my company’s first Operation QIC (pronounced “quick” for Quality Is Contagious) workshop, we experienced huge revenue growth in our business.

Here are some specifics: Using the year before the workshop as the basis, we increased profits by 224% the year after our workshop, and by 213% in the following year!

You might be asking yourself, “All that growth from just a few workshops?” And then the follow-up question, “How did you do that?”

The key was in the follow-through!

Every organization can experience financial success by spreading the QIC spirit of follow-through.

Our people truly caught the quality epidemic (playing off the word, “contagious”) and had spread the QIC spirit.

The QIC workshop produced literally 100’s of quality improvement ideas from our people! They were so excited that the leadership team really listened to their ideas, that they desired to put the extra effort into the follow through of those suggestions.

We took Proverbs 19:20 to heart,

“Listen to advice and accept instruction, that you may gain wisdom in the future.”

That desire and will is what allowed us to reduce expenses and increase productivity during a period of huge revenue growth. And at the same time have fun doing so!

Insight: When you involve your people in the decision-making process, you truly empower them, and empowered employees are energized to follow through with the decisions that they helped make!

In the year after the first Operation QIC^® workshop, the quality fever reached epidemic proportions.

In my previous blog post, I mentioned about our second Operation QIC workshop.

Nevertheless, not wanting to become complacent, during the following year, our people participated in our third and fourth Operation QIC workshops.

Our people enjoyed some lighter moments when members of our leadership team entertained them with a three-act, play reinforcing a quality environment!

Follow Through

I challenged our people to commit, individually and as a team, to still higher levels of the quality fever.

The following is a sample of how our people caught the quality spirit to follow through after the first Operation QIC workshop:

• Our people helped us eliminate several unnecessary internal forms and reports.

• They helped with ideas toward upgrades to computer software and hardware.

• They helped set performance goals for every employee.

• They helped us focus on cross-training so we could move people to the work when needing to meet peak demands.

• They helped expand our training and education, and then, track it to ensure we were doing enough.

• They formed, a truck drivers/crew leaders quality improvement committee for our moving and storage business.

• We had so many quality improvement ideas to consider, our employees formed a quality improvement committee where people could continuously submit ideas and innovations. The committee also selected ideas for financial rewards.

• They helped create an operational procedures manual distributed to our national suppliers/movers network that was adopted as an industry standard.

• We created a new nation-wide moving business unit to increase the convenience, and quality, and give price-certainty to every customer.

•     ->Traditional industry data entries on forms and documents were reduced from around 3,000 to less than 700.

•     ->Cargo claims were reduced by more than 50%, and if we broke something or if anything was missing, we would repair it or replace it.

•     ->Increase in speed of transit-time was made, as well as, day-certain pickup and delivery was provided.

•     ->Simplified pricing was made from a traditional industry tariff book made up of 100’s and 100’s of pages to one single page front and back.

• Our people got involved in setting-up company-wide fun events, e.g. Kids Day, annual company picnic, Christmas party, etc.

• We gave each employee a bright yellow t-shirt and a baseball cap with Operation QIC in red on them. This created a consistent look for everyone in the company regardless of their position. The moving crews wore them every day in the customers’ home.

Because the t-shirts only had Operation QIC, customers were always asking, “What does that mean?”  This created an opportunity for our people to share about the QIC spirit in our company.

When you ask your employees for input on key decisions, you win in two ways. First, you get quality input from people who often know more about the challenges and improvements possible in your industry. Secondly, you energize them with the will to follow through on their own suggestions!

How do you involve your employees in decision-making?  Once you make a decision are your people empowered to follow through?  Please share your comments <here> and share this blog post with a friend or co-worker.