In my last article, I wrote about kaizen, a Japanese business philosophy of constant improvement. I'd like to follow up on that discussion with a brief demonstration of how even seemingly small changes can have a huge effect on your business.
How can you save your company $2,000,000 in just 5 minutes? Follow along to see how.
It takes my laptop 14 minutes to startup. That's from the moment I press the power button to the time I am able to launch my first email in Outlook. Even if you subtract for XP itself, that's a long time. I am not your typical user: I defrag my machine often, explicitly shut off non-essential services, map only one network drive, have wifi explicitly disabled, and put nothing in my startup folder except for the aforementioned Outlook. Oh, and I've done most of the recommended tweaks to get XP to boot faster. So where does the rest of the time come from? All the stuff my company does to make sure my laptop is secure, has its updates, and whatever else is in the standard image.
Don't get me wrong, this is important stuff and I support it whole-heartedly. But consider this, what if a VP walked over to the IT department and said: “Guys, find a way to shave 5 minutes off the system boot times while keeping the systems secure and I’ll pay you a $5000 bonus.” Watch how fast those minutes disappear.
14 minutes. Big whoop, right? Chillax, press start, go grab a cup of coffee, and when you come back you're ready to go. Okay, smart guy, what if I'm in the middle of a critical 30-minute meeting with the CFO and my laptop requires a restart? 'Cause that never happens on Windows, right? So there goes half my meeting there.
What would happen if IT just shaved off 5 of those minutes?
Embed the Kaizen Calculator on your site by copying the code below:
That's what 5 minutes means. Backup for a second, Serge, that’s great for large companies but what about smaller companies? Okay, take a 25-person outfit, with an average of $15/hr:
- Cancel one unnecessary 30-minute meeting each month ($2250)
- If half are parents who usually leave 15 minutes early to pick up their kids, provide onsite daycare (still at the employees' expense) ($11250)
- Save 2 minutes by reducing just 5 emails ($3000)
- Provide computers that boot just 1 minute faster ($1500)
That's $18000 right there.
Yes, yes, it's a bit of a leap to say that this saves the company in real terms because you won't actually see that in the bottom line. Okay, so quantify for me how much work-related stress does cost the company. What are the recruitment and training costs of retaining and having to re-hire talent due to attrition? What is the value of being recognized as one of the best companies to work for? Measure for me the lost opportunity costs of all those minutes added up when said employees could be working on other things in a state of peace and tranquility.
That is the point of kaizen. A relatively simple idea of reducing the amount of time it takes for a computer to restart can create a culture capable of constant improvement. This is the type of environment that nurtures employees who will think of that huge cost savings or that next multi-million dollar revenue stream.
Have time-saving ideas for your company? Share in the comments section below. Play around with the Kaizen Calculator to see how much your company could be saving.
Oh, and you probably could have read this article 8 times in the time it took me to restart my laptop.
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