Donald Mitchell's Articles in Business

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Doing Things the Way They've Always Been Done Is Costly -- If It Isn't Broken, Improve It Anyway! Everything we do can be improved. But following a company or family tradition can keep us from considering how matters can be enhanced. Question those traditions to get the best results. This article provides directions for how to shed those outmoded traditions. Seek Out Ugly Ducklings to Find the Best Profit Opportunities If something smells and looks bad, few will go near. Yet that unattractive mess may be a jackpot in disguise as Alexander Fleming discovered in finding out more about bread mold ... and producing penicillin. Chances are your competitors are ignoring the same areas, and you can leap ahead and end up smelling like roses by diving into understanding what everyone else avoids. For Smoother Operations, Reduce the Number of People Involved From small to large organizations, matters slow down because people are needlessly involved. In small companies, the owners may stick their noses into everyone's activities. In larger companies, the checkers may be checking on the checkers. This article describes how to simplify operations for better, more profitable results. Delay Is Almost Always Costly: Act Now to Profit More! Procrastinators falsely believe that delay is seldom a disadvantage. The opposite is true . . . you often die by inches because of delays. This article looks at how to be rational about deciding when immediate action makes more sense than further study, thought, and delay. Are Your Measurements Making You Look Bad? Most organizations have measurements they use to establish how well they are doing. Many of these measurements can be misleading when it comes to performing well for customers. This article explains better ways of measuring to get the optimal results. Would You Hire a Carpenter Who Never Measures? -- Progress through Measurements of What to Work on Sloppy carpentry can ruin the most valuable materials and leave a mess that costs a fortune to correct. Yet many businesses limit themselves to measuring physical things, such as a good carpenter might do. Perhaps no more helpful measurements exist than those that direct us towards valuable tasks. One Man's Pathway to Bridging Cultural Chasms: Experience, Question, Study, and Reform Understanding Have you ever wondered why some people cannot seem to cooperate? In this article, you'll learn how premises based on cultural influences can be a problem. Make those premises explicit to everyone involved, and new forms of cooperation can follow. Combine the Best of Today in New Ways to Outperform Competitors' Bests Tomorrow Chances are that your organization does not yet know how to find and select the improved practice elements that, when combined for the first time, will drive you well ahead of the competition. This article gives you shortcuts to identify future best practices. Look at the Right Barometers to Accomplish a Performance Breakthrough Many people miss the opportunity for large improvements because they don't focus on the right measurements to inform their management decisions. This article provides guidelines for avoiding that error so you can increase the likelihood of making performance breakthroughs. I Can Do Anything You Can Do Better Than You: Ways to Back Up Your Dare It's great fun to jump ahead of everyone else, but few accomplish that terrific result. This article shows you the common sense ways to get ahead by always aiming ahead of what anyone else is thinking about. Zoom Toward Accomplishing Breakthrough Goals Most people know how to set high goals, but few have any idea how to implement those high goals. As a result, the high goals are abandoned, and improvements crawl along. In this article, you'll learn how to rapidly turn high goals into that level of performance. Lead to a Breakthrough: Develop a Vision of the Most Helpful Perfection as a Goal Improvement depends on seeking after the right goals. In this article, you'll find out what the goals are that will lead you to make breakthroughs that competitors will never match. Put a Winning Team into the Competitive Fray to Create Breakthroughs over Competitors In this article, I describe how choosing the right team and encouraging the right actions will lead to breakthrough performance. Pursue Repeated Breakthroughs in the Same Area for the Fastest Improvements Many people fall back satisfied as soon as they make one breakthrough. That's a mistake. This article explains that future breakthroughs can probably be achieved in the same area to accelerate improvements by exponential amounts. Win the Race to Make Breakthrough Improvements "What if" thinking can lead to seeing higher potential areas for creating breakthrough improvements. This article provides an example of how to do this kind of thinking and accomplish a large profit improvement. Identify World Class Breakthroughs Many people jump on the first way they think of to make an improvement. With more care, you can find a breakthrough instead. This article describes ways to achieve breakthroughs with less effort. Make Breakthroughs by Creating a Culture of Helpful Traditions People are creatures of unthinking habits. With the right habits, we can accomplish great things. With the wrong habits, we miss opportunities. This article explains how to harness habits for your benefit. Connect the Dots Correctly to Succeed Many of us get into trouble by making assumptions that aren't even close to being true. From there, we spin fantasies of what might work . . . without taking the time to check out thinking. This article shows how you can focus on the right areas for improvements and progress. Salespeople: Ask Questions to Find Out if You Are Getting Your Point Across Most salespeople focus on a great pitch for their offerings. But it may not be such a great pitch if the listener doesn't care about what you have to say or doesn't understand. Questions can help you make more sales than even the best pitch. Grasp the Prize by Considering Potential Most of us focus on the defects in what's available rather than what can be done to eliminate defects and add benefits. This article describes how to seize larger potential opportunities and capitalize on them. Danger: Your Beliefs Are Destroying Your Best Opportunities Why don't more people make breakthroughs? It's because they believe that breakthroughs aren't possible. This article explains how to get past that purely mental roadblock. Be Attracted to What Repels You to Make a Strategic Breakthrough Most of us avoid what smells bad, looks unattractive, and sounds awful. Because of that, untapped opportunities lurk where no one wants to go. Don't Let Misperceptions Guide Your Entrepreneurial Decisions Entrepreneurs often take up the wrong opportunities because they misperceive the potential. This article explains how to avoid that problem. Simplify Your Work to Make Your Work Better Many people cannot resist adding little touches to improve an offering or a way of providing that offering. Yet if those little touches add more work, they may ultimately diminish the value for customers and users by increasing mistakes while driving those who produce the offering crazy. Keep it simple! Measure the Value of What You Are Doing as Carefully as Warren Buffett Much of what a business does adds no value. With the right measurements, those areas can be identified and eliminated. This article explains how to use measurements in this way. Act Like Your Life Depends on Action, and You'll Beat the Competition In many business situations, taking action is better than identifying the ideal action. Figure out where immediate action is needed and take that action to gain a competitive advantage. Check Your Plan Before You Act Many business people have the habit of repeating what they've done before. Such a habit becomes harmful when the plan for creating results is the wrong one. This article looks at using measurements to focus on improvements instead. Create Full Flavored Effectiveness by Seasoning Improvements with Complementary Instincts Many businesspeople try to explore improvements too narrowly. That's like always seasoning your food with salt only . . . it's not good for your blood pressure and the taste gets boring. Stop Daydreaming about Having More and Grasp a Hen That Lays Golden Eggs Most people would like to have more . . . and know just what they would spend more money on. They would do better to find a way instead to create more with limited effort. Practice Making Breakthroughs Focus is hard to find in most companies. This article explains how a little focus on breakthroughs can create powerful improvements. Leading for Breakthrough Success Breakthroughs require different management methods than do smaller improvements. This article outlines what's required for breakthroughs. Weave a Flawless Fabric of Cooperation Many believe that the need to cooperate is a disadvantage. But start with the right concept for cooperation, and you'll turn cooperation into a flawless advantage. Don't Try to Put Humpty Dumpty Together -- Assemble Instead a Gorgeous Patchwork Quilt of Practices Many business people try to push a way of operating past where it can be successful, such as by running an assembly line too fast or with too few people. In this article, we look at changing the very concept of how to combine effective practices to create one well beyond what others have accomplished before. Anticipate Where the State-of-the-Art Will Be If You Want to Reach Past That Level Many business people are locked into poor performance by aiming to meet standards that were obsolete years ago. They need to dig their heads out of the sand and look forward to where the best performance levels of today seem to be headed in the near future. With that perspective, they can begin to identify ways to improve beyond that future level of performance. Practice Reducing Your Work Week by 38 Hours Parkinson's Law says that the time to do an activity will expand to fill the time available. That makes for a long work week if a person is willing to work long hours. This article looks at how you can do the opposite -- commit fewer hours and get the same amount done. It's a lifesaver for those who want to have a life outside of work. Take 38 Hours Off from Your Work Week and Still Get the Same Results Most business people spend their time on tasks that don't need to be done, performing tasks that do need to be done in in effective ways, and by involving themselves in work that doesn't need their input. In this article, I explain how you can get your work done in very little time while still accomplishing just as much. Let Survival Lessons Show You the Way to Breakthrough Improvements When we have to choice but to change, we can be ingenious at making improvements. This article shows how survival threats can drive exponential improvements. Don't Become Obsolete -- Do That to the Competition This article explains how you can install a management process to avoid obsolescence while threatening your competitors with becoming irrelevant to customers. A Leader's Job One -- Set the Right Goals to Make Helpful Breakthroughs Few organizations have any goals to make breakthroughs. It's no wonder they don't. This article explains how to set the right breakthrough goals. Do Twice the Work and Enjoy 20 Times the Results Breakthroughs are wonderful, but breakthroughs that multiply their benefits can improve profits by 400 times. This article explains how to achieve that wonderful result. Get Ready to Expand Your Number of Customers by 21 Times Most people aim at adding 2-3 percent more customers a year. Why not gain 2100 percent more? This article explains how. A Technical Whiz Becomes a Business Leader Many technical people dream of moving into management. But the pathway isn't clear. This real-life example should provide lots of guidance for making such a shift. Estimate the Profit Consequences of Adding More Benefits to Grow More Rapidly You could lower prices, add more features, improve the packaging, provide promotions, or increase marketing. Which direction will bring the biggest increase in profitable sales? Add benefits customers want that cost you little. Use Knee-Jerk Reactions to Kick Start Improvements Many businesspeople make it too complicated when it comes to creating an environment for making improvements. This article shows how basic instincts are the best way to give you the results you want. Go from Seeing an Opportunity to Becoming a Breakthrough Leader Low-profile change often works better than high-profile change, but it's had to persuade CEOs of that. In this article, I explain what leaders must do to achieve breakthroughs. Lower Costs for Those Who Receive Your Offerings and Become More Efficient There's a wonderful win-win when you can reduce operating costs and make it less expensive for people to use your offerings. This article explains how to analyze the opportunity to make this improvement. Consider All Your Costs Before Adding New Products and Services Sometimes you are better off not adding an offering because your costs go up faster than your profit contribution. This article shows how to avoid that problem and add highly profitable new offerings for your customers. Who, What, and Where You Provide Your Offerings Have Huge Profit Effects This article looks at the interaction of customer selection and location with the type of offerings you provide for impacting profits and growth potential. Add More Value for Your Beneficiaries by Picking the Right Benefits Some people think that being an charitable enterprise means you just have to give things away. But it's much better to give away the right things. Otherwise, you won't be able to help as many people. Be More Available to Your Customers Many organizations schedule their hours to make life pleasant for employees. That can be costly if those hours make life unpleasant for customers. This article explains how to think about the hours you operate. Take Costs Away from Customers If You Want More of Them A narrow focus on operating cost reduction can create inefficiencies for customers that drive down sales and profits. The article explains that you have to look at both your own and customers' costs before making a business model change. Profitably Expand into the Best New Products and Services You have a business that needs new products and services. What should you offer? This article explains how to think about that important question. Redirect Your Offerings into New Uses That Delight Customers Just because your product or service has always been provided in one way doesn't mean it cannot be used in a better way. This article looks at the rewards of this kind of business model innovation. Which New Customers Should You Try to Attract? To many business leaders, one customer is about the same as another . . . except where personal friendships are involved. But 80 percent of profits come from only 20 percent of customers. Be sure you go after the right new customers to gain the most profit growth. Focus on Why Customers Want Your Offering and How You Provide It Many business leaders think about what they offer in terms of how they use the offering, rather than how customers do. That's an expensive mistake in many cases. This article describes a better approach. Make Life More Convenient for Customers: Be Open When They Need You Anyone who has looked in vain for a product or service when needed knows that businesses are usually open when it's convenient for them . . . not for when it's convenient for their customers. This article looks at how to profitably remedy this fault. Steer Your Customers to the Right Offerings Most customers pick the wrong offerings and for the wrong reasons. The resulting disappointments harm your business. This article shows how to avoid that problem. Upgrade the Role You Play in Your Customers' Lives Would you rather lead a star business or be a bit performer? This article describes how the role you choose in serving customers determines your ultimate success. What Are the Highest and Best Directions for Your Offerings and Talents? If we aim at less than what we and our offerings can provide we shortchange customers and ourselves. As the world changes, we need to constantly review how we can provide better applications of our offerings and talents. To Grow Faster Take the Simple Route to Expansion Where You Can Safely Travel Fastest Having chosen a way to grow much more, it's easy to get bogged down when trying to actually grow. In many cases, those implementation problems are created by having chosen a poor way to pursue growth. This article provides good ways to choose better growth paths. How Can You Deliver Improved Offerings in the Most Pleasant Way? While many organizations seek to provide improved offerings, relatively little thought goes into making the use of those offerings to be as pleasant as possible. That oversight costs a lot of sales. This article provides questions and an example to help overcome that problem. Provide Your Offerings in the Right Places One location is never enough. The article explores the potential to provide vastly more offerings by being located in more appropriate and convenient places. Ignorance Keeps Most People from Being Willing to Buy from You Most customers wouldn't even consider buying from you. Why? Most of them can't even think of you when they consider where to buy. Ignore this ignorance, and you ignore most of your growth potential. Share Your Growth Vision by Telling Your Story Better Ask most people in an organization what they are supposed to be doing, and you'll find some confused employees. Tell those same people a compelling story about the organization's purpose, and they'll know what to do. This article explains what to do in crafting your vision story. Look Beyond Dreams of Vast Growth to Find and Prepare for Practical Problems Almost everyone dreams of pursuing huge potential. But most are scared off by their fears rather than practically identifying what needs to be done. This article proposes a mindset to help you turn worthwhile dreams of vast growth into reality. Once Satisfied, We Happily Drive Past the Competition Who Offers a Better Alternative Most customers aren't looking for the best. They just want to get what satisfies them with the least effort. As a result, they miss great opportunities right under their noses. Find Out Why Most People Don't Buy or Use Your Offerings Many leaders are blissfully unaware that most potential customers and beneficiaries of their offerings wouldn't employ those offerings even if paid to do so. How can they hope to grow their organizations without dealing with those issues? This article argues finding out why you are being rejected is essential to achieving rapid growth. Identify and Eliminate Customer Complacency That Costs You Profitabale Growth Customers are so easily satisfied that they will be satisfied with results that cost them money and threaten their lives. This article explains the need to address that customer complacency and overcome it to produce profitable growth. Barriers to Reaching Ignorant Potential Customers Many business leaders just assume they can reach all of their potential customers effectively by taking out some advertising. But it's much harder than that to get the attention of potential customers. This article looks at the barriers to attention and suggests some questions that can lead to solutions. Correct Misperceptions That Drive Away Potential Customers and Beneficiaries Most people misunderstand what you do and what the benefits are. This article explains how those misperceptions occur and how to overcome them. Disbelief Is Leading Your Potential Customers Astray Many organizations suffer from inadequate marketing; marketing that leaves potential customers with disbelief about the organizations' offerings will do. This article looks at how to identify harmful disbelief that marketing should dispel. Most of Your Potential Customers Are Confused About What They Want Marketing must focus on helping potential customers realize what their needs really are and what offerings will provide for those true needs. This article addresses how false beliefs cause potential customers to act in ways contrary to their best interest and yours. Questions are provided to eliminate this problem. Find Dangerous Profit-Spilling Icebergs Before You Ram Them Trial and error management means hitting obstacles, repairing the damage, and starting off in a new direction. With the right warning, you can skip hitting the obstacles and head straight for the prize of greater profits. This article suggests a method for improving over trial and error management. Overcome Mistrust of Your Motives and Performance to Gain Many More Customers Customers have been abused for so long by so many organizations that they are reluctant to trust again. That makes them not want to buy from you. This article addresses how to overcome that mistrust. Follow the Rainbow Path to the Pot of Gold Delivered by Rapid Growth Small businesses cannot use the same methods that giants do to increase growth. This article looks at what can be done by small businesses to locate better growth paths. Find High-Speed Roads to Growth at Low Cost A rich organization can afford millions to find rapid growth paths. A small organization may only be able to spend a few hundred dollars for the same purpose. This article shows how both large and small businesses would benefit from taking the low-cost path. Use Guerrilla Tactics to Locate the Best High-Speed Paths to Growth Unconventional sources for finding growth paths are usually cheaper, faster, and more accurate than the tried and true methods in an industry. This article suggests a process for finding such unconventional sources that organizations of any size can benefit from using. How Can You Make It a Joy to Provide New Offerings? A great new offering delivered by a surly grouch will fail. How can you be sure that those who deliver your offerings will delight your customers? Overcome Ignorance to Find Great Ways to Eliminate Obstacles to Profit Growth Companies are like spring-loaded catapults poised to push profit growth rapidly forward. But someone has to unleash the spring, obstacles to profit growth, before that profit expansion can be enjoyed. Are You Best Suited by One Strategy or Two for Eliminating Obstacles to Exponential Growth Efficiency favors one strategy for expanding growth, but sometimes you get better results by following two complementary strategies. This article looks at how to decide which approach is better. Imagine the Best and the Worst Conditions to Create the Best Breakthrough Organizations can produce better strategies and plans when they think about what directions will work best . . . regardless of what comes next. Seven Simple Steps to Locating Your Profit-Expanding Obstacles Most attempts to grow faster fail due to running into large unanticipated obstacles. This article describes a method for locating such obstacles before you try to grow. Prepare a High-Speed Road to Profitable Growth Knowing what obstacles to avoid in growing is just half the battle. You still have to find the best ways to avoid those obstacles by using new methods. Speed Up Your Profit Expansion by Stealthily Testing Every Promising Idea Simultaneously Organizations often presume to know what profit expanding tests will work best. This article points out that you are better off assuming that you don't know and how to act on that observation. Test Your Exponential Profit Growth Strategies Out of Sight Competitors may steal your growth strategies if they monitor your tests. This article looks at how to avoid that problem. Learn Lessons about How to Grow Profits from How Disease Has Spread Ignorance is a great barrier to profit growth. Even when life itself is at stake, ignorance too often reigns. This article proposes that leaders and managers explore what they do not know to grasp rapid profit growth. Make Explaining Your New Profit Growth Route Your Top Priority Explaining how to expand profits is usually the last item on the list for a profit-expanding new strategy. As a result, this important activity receives short shrift and is usually botched with expensive consequences. Embed Your Essential Profit-Expanding Messages into Your Offerings Choose a new profit-expanding direction, and most people either won't get the word or will be confused. Trying in your messages about profit expansion into your offerings, and you'll do a lot better in profit growth. Start Sooner on Developing Your Profit-Expanding Communications Instructions for creating a profit-expanding opportunity are usually left until the last moment. The result is often a confusing mess that leaves lots of profit unachieved. Observe, Correct, Observe, and Correct Your Profit-Improvement Directions . . . and Keep Repeating One person's clear path to profit increase is another person's puzzle. This article looks at the need to monitor and adjust communications until everyone gets the message. Study Your Instructions Carefully Before Launching into Exponential Cost Reductions Many cost reduction efforts are a disaster. Why? They cause costs to rise. Enjoying Exponential Cost Reductions Can Be as Easy as Learning a New Language This article provides a description of how exponential cost reductions can be accomplished through business model innovation. Reasons for and Methods of Exponential Cost Breakthroughs Most people don't believe that exponential cost breakthroughs are possible. Among those who do believe, there is often a failure to appreciate the activities involved. This article explores both dimensions. To Make Exponential Cost Reductions, Start by Eliminating the Unnecessary You want to reduce costs by 96 percent. Where do you start? Eliminate the unnecessary. Ask Your Customers, Users, and Beneficiaries What's Needed and What's Unnecessary To make exponential cost reductions, you need to check first with those who will be most affected. Find out what they don't want or need . . . and eliminate those elements. An Online MBA Helps a Copy Cat Entrepreneur Become an Educational Leader Entrepreneurs can improve their chances of success by mastering the key perspectives of good business management rather than just copying what others are doing. This article contains an example of how one entrepreneur pursued this lesson. Create a Bias for Eliminating the Unnecessary Everyone sees wasteful activities. Most organizations make it unclear how to get rid of those wasteful actions. By changing that circumstance to encouraging everyone to eliminate the wasteful, great cost reductions will follow. Experience Your Own Process and Challenge Those Who Operate It to Improve and Reduce Costs It's easy to become complacent about the way you serve customers and other stakeholders. But put yourself in their shoes and you'll quickly see what needs to be improved. Challenge your colleagues then to improve performance and reduce costs. Make Costs Breakthroughs by Visiting Other Countries to See How People There Do What You Do Complacency over costly ways of operating can often be successfully challenged by seeing the solutions that others have employed throughout the world. Publish a New Route Map and Erect New Road Signs to Direct Everyone to Rapid Profit Growth Successful growth strategies depend on excellent execution. Before anything can be done, people need to know what the new directions are.
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