The environmental rallying call
I often hear environmentalists use the terms Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. They refer to the ways in which we can create less waste and minimise our impact on the environment.
These terms are equally applicable to businesses.
Business waste isn’t solely environmental — though some companies are guilty of generating plenty of rubbish. Business waste is activity that isn’t important to customers. To put it another way, waste is anything that a business does that a customer would not be prepared to pay for.
Removing waste helps to identify ways that we can deliver value to our customers both faster and cheaper.
To reduce business waste, we can also use the environmentalist’s approach and look for ways to reduce, reuse and recycle.
Reduce
Reducing business waste starts by identifying it. We should examine every process and activity and highlight wasteful activities.
Once we’ve found those activities it is worth asking if we could just remove them.
- When was the last time anyone actually read that report?
- Would the world stop if you didn’t hold that management meeting?
- Do you really need to put everybody through that training programme?
Why not stop and see if anyone complains?
If we can’t eliminate an activity then maybe it we can streamline or automate it.
Reuse
Reusing processes and solutions helps businesses to be more efficient. It stops duplicate work going on in different departments. People always have their own tools and ways of doing things. By standardising approaches businesses can achieve economies of scale.
- Create templates and guides to help you to re-use them across the organisation.
- Look for single ‘best practice’ solutions are rather than multiple suboptimal ones.
- Ask how can I use this solution to solve other problems.
Looking for opportunities to reuse activities and processes opens your eyes to new ways of thinking.
Recycle
Don’t reinvent the wheel every time you have a problem. If somebody in your business has had a similar issue then take their solution and recycle it.
There is a website or app for almost everything. Somebody somewhere has the same problem as you have. If you can find it you can recycle it.
Good citizens
We all have a responsibility to reduce reuse and recycle to protect our planet for future generations. As good corporate citizens we should do the same in our workplaces to help us weather economic storms and keep our customers happy.
Just remember that no-one likes being told they are wasteful. So approach the subject with care!
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