There’s nothing more aggravating to an executive than to be surprised to find that something he thought was being done was not. How do you avoid such surprises?
Well, one way is to statisize on a piece of graph paper all important functions in the organization. Prepare the graph by listing time across the bottom of the graph and quantity up the left side. This gives the executive an instant visual idea of past and present production, if targets are being met and if the company is delivering valuable products that customers are willing to pay for.
Studio98 is in the business of internet marketing. We build and maintain websites; we do pay per click and SEO services, and we create systems for other marketing companies, to name a few. In our weekly staff meeting, Rafferty Pendery, the CEO of Studio98, wants to see the stats for that week. As an example, Gross Income (GI) is a stat that most companies keep. It’s a good one because it can tell you a lot about production and the quality of the products within the company at a glance. If the products of the business are moving through the various steps correctly, then they will come out the other end a product the customer is willing to pay for. A rising GI indicates that competent services are being performed by competent staff members. It also indicates that products are being finished on time.
But that’s not the only stat. Each employee has a job. He’s producing something or should be. He should have a stat graph to log his or her products. This has been found to tremendously help employee morale. His individual contributions to the overall goals of the company are there in black and white. It’s also a good defense against a crazy manager.
A graph showing the relative rises and falls is a bold visual representation of the condition in present time of any given area of the company. To a trained eye it can impart a wealth of information
For instance, if a statistic is higher this week than last, it indicates you are doing something right so don’t change anything just continue doing what you’re doing. If it’s down this week from last week it tells you something is awry so you need to act to reverse the statistic.
As obvious as this sounds, few companies know what to statisize or how to interpret the trends once statisized. The result is that the company is not doing as well as it could be and there are a lot of key personnel keeping a lot of data rattling around in their heads.
The statisizing of the various jobs within the company is one of the simplest ways to increase productivity that you’ve ever seen.
Try it out and let me know what happened.
Bob Cook
Co-founder Studio98, LLC
