Optimize For Outcomes - The Podcast
51 episodes - English - Latest episode: about 2 years ago -Do you need help scaling your business? What about hiring and managing employees?Are you implementing technology to streamline your business? Do you have problems you're trying to solve? If you answered yes to any of the above, you can benefit from learning to Optimize For Outcomes. With a base in systems thinking, process improvement and a 20 year technical consulting corporate career, I'm sharing the most important knowledge for growing and managing a business successfully. Applying systems thinking to your business will help it get more effective, efficient, and productive. I cover the mental models and methodologies that will help your business make more while spending less while saving time. https://www.optimizeforoutcomes.com/systems-thinking-blog/ has written versions of all full-length podcasts. Visit https://www.optimizeforoutcomes.com/services/ to understand how we can help you with your business.
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Episodes
March Update
March 08, 2022 01:00 - 6 minutes - 4.83 MBHey everyone! This is a quick update on the last couple of months and an update on plans for future episodes.
How to Interview Potential Employees or Contractors – A Systems Thinking Approach
October 22, 2021 23:00 - 35 minutes - 24.4 MBIn this episode, I cover a system that you can use in your business for interviewing prospective employees or contractors. I cover how to prepare for the interview including identifying the must haves and nice to haves. I talk through organizing questions and how to structure questions to get more meaningful answers. I give a few examples from actual interviews that I did. This one is about twice as long as usual, but I didn't want to leave anything out or split it in half. The writ...
How to Hire Employees and Others into Your Business
October 11, 2021 16:00 - 18 minutes - 12.6 MBHiring the right resources in your business is one of the most important activities you can do. Do it right and you'll be able to achieve more than you could ever imagine. Do it wrong and your team or business will stagnate at best. In this episode, I cover the key steps in getting the people resources you need including long-term employees, contractors, freelancers, and vendors. Here's a link to a related resource mentioned in this video - a course on how to perform a time study...
Hiring and Managing People in your Business
October 03, 2021 19:00 - 15 minutes - 10.6 MBOne of the most important things you do as a leader is to identify and bring people resources into your business. This week is an introduction to People Lifecycle Management. I introduce the four phases of managing people in your business and lay the foundation for deep dives into each of the phases in the coming four weeks. Learning how to hire, rewire, inspire, and retire people is critical to growing and scaling your business beyond the solo entrepreneur phase.
How to use Change Management for Better Business Optimization
October 01, 2021 22:00 - 15 minutes - 10.7 MBChange Management is an important part of any optimization work that you do in your business. People have a tendency to revert to old habits. Even when a change is beneficial, people can slide back to doing things "the old way." Change management helps you proactively address this concern and helps you ensure that any changes you make will become new habits that last.
How to Automate Business Processes
September 20, 2021 15:00 - 15 minutes - 10.9 MBIf you want to get more efficient and/or grow your business or team, learning how to automate business processes is critical to reaching that outcome. I will sequence how you can approach automating business processes and give you some pointers on things to do and things to avoid. Having this lightweight framework will give you a mental model for thinking through the core steps to automating a business process in an effective and efficient manner.
How to Improve Business Processes - a Mental Model
September 13, 2021 22:00 - 14 minutes - 10.2 MBIf you want to improve business processes, a simple mental model can help you with your approach. Eliminate, Consolidate, Automate Eliminate the things you're doing that aren't helping you achieve your desired outcomes or adding value to the Customer. Consolidate like "things" in your business into a single process to manage them. Automate your business processes, removing manual work and giving your business scale that it otherwise couldn't get.
Using a SIPOC to Improve Your Business
September 07, 2021 04:00 - 18 minutes - 13 MBA SIPOC is a process improvement tool that you can use to map a business process. SIPOC is an acronym that stands for Supplier, Input, Process Step, Output, Customer. Use it to map these attributes of a business system. You can then use this information to identify changes to make to improve your system. I've added some additional elements to the SIPOC to increase its usability and value in process improvement work.
Short - Use a Swimlane Diagram to Improve Employee Management
September 03, 2021 02:00 - 39 seconds - 506 KBYou can better manage your employees using swimlane diagrams. A swimlane diagram is going to help you understand the dynamics between different roles in your business or team and help you identify potential problems or conflicts. You're also going to gain perspective on the work the team is actually doing which you can use for goal setting and career planning. Visit People Management - Optimize For Outcomes to learn how I can help you better manage employees in your company.
Short - Swimlane Diagrams Help You Scale Your Business
September 01, 2021 21:00 - 52 seconds - 653 KBUse a swimlane diagram to document your processes. Draw lanes left to right for each person or tech in a process and then draw out each step in the process and put it in the swimlane for the person or tech responsible for that tech. This will help you see and understand where handoffs are happening in your process as well as rework and process loops. All of these are big areas of inefficiency that you can then address with systems thinking and process improvement tools which will help yo...
Short - Four Applications for Drawing Swimlane Diagrams
August 31, 2021 16:00 - 57 seconds - 714 KBHere are four different applications you can use to draw swimlane diagrams. Each has its own benefits, so weigh what's right for you and your business and make a decision. MS Visio - very powerful and tightly integrated with Microsoft's other productivity apps. It's not part of Office though and requires additional licenses which might be cost-prohibitive. Google Drawings - Google's free drawing application which has many of the features of MS Visio and all of Google's pros/cons for th...
Using a Swimlane Diagram to Improve Your Business
August 30, 2021 21:00 - 21 minutes - 14.7 MBA swimlane diagram is a tool that you can use to get a detailed view of a process in your business. It's used when you need a deeper understanding of a process than a process narrative can provide. It's useful when trying to get more efficient with your process or as training documentation for new employees. Oftentimes, just by creating a swimlane diagram of a process, you'll see 2-3 things you can do immediately to make the process better. This podcast references a diagram that can b...
Short - Use Root Cause Analysis to Better Manage People
August 26, 2021 21:00 - 25 seconds - 332 KBIf you manage employees in your business, add root cause analysis to the way you think Doing root cause analysis can help you better understand performance issues and solve any problem you're facing while managing people. You'll understand the problems on a deeper level and come up with better solutions, saving you time, energy, and money in the long run.
Short - Root Cause Analysis and 5 whys can help you scale your business
August 25, 2021 21:00 - 32 seconds - 421 KBHow can root cause analysis help your business grow? Growing a business, you need to get effectiveness and efficiency right first. To do that, you have to solve problems that are preventing effectiveness and efficiency. Use the 5 whys to get to root causes of problems and solve the problems that really matter.
Short - Technology to help with Root Cause Analysis in your Business
August 24, 2021 17:00 - 41 seconds - 528 KBUsing technology can help you do root cause analysis in your business. Keep in mind that a root cause analysis is more about thinking, so the best tools are things you can use to give reminders to ask follow-up questions.
Root Cause Analysis and the Five Whys
August 23, 2021 00:00 - 19 minutes - 13.6 MBRoot Cause Analysis is a way of thinking to help you look beyond surface level symptoms and solve problems at a deeper level. This will save you time, energy, and money which will make it easier for you to grow your business and build for the long term. You'll solve the right problems faster and with better solutions than if you treat surface-level symptoms that are causing your business issues. While there are many tools to help you do this, I focus primarily on understanding the five...
Short - Effectiveness vs Efficiency - Hiring Employees Example
August 19, 2021 17:00 - 43 seconds - 546 KBUnderstanding the difference between effectiveness and efficiency is critical for improving your business. If you don't do this, you won't know how to fix the problems that are preventing your growth and preventing you from achieving your desired outcomes.
Short - Fix Your Effectiveness and Efficiency Before Trying to Scale
August 18, 2021 16:00 - 50 seconds - 628 KBIf you want to grow your business successfully, you need to work on your effectiveness and efficiency before trying to scale. Businesses that don't do this will run into problems quickly, and those problems will be major roadblocks to any growth.
Short - Tech for Understanding Effectiveness
August 17, 2021 18:00 - 48 seconds - 607 KBUsing technology to survey Customers is a great way to understand the effectiveness of your products. For internal business systems, most software has built-in metrics that will give you an understanding of the effectiveness of the system using the software.
Effectiveness vs Efficiency - Know the Difference
August 15, 2021 22:00 - 20 minutes - 13.9 MB| Effectiveness and Efficiency are often misunderstood. In business, knowing the difference can be the difference between your business growing or remaining stagnant. I talk through examples of scaling, using technology to better understand your effectiveness and efficiency, and how to think about the effectiveness and efficiency of how your business hires employees. Thanks for listening! Any questions or feedback can be sent to me at [email protected]
Short - Using Time Studies At Any Stage in Business
August 13, 2021 17:00 - 16 seconds - 234 KBNo matter where your business is at today, taking the time to do a time study can help you better understand where your time is going and what you can do to get more efficient with your work. Whether your business is brand new or has been around for years, take a week to track your time, get a better understanding of where your time is going, and make adjustments to refocus on what's going to give you the outcomes you want.
Improve Hiring in Your Business Using a Time Study
August 12, 2021 23:00 - 14 minutes - 10.2 MBA time study will help you understand the work that needs to get done in your business on a deeper level. Understanding this will help you hire the right people and will help you distribute the work amongst your employees. In this episode, Brian dives deep into an example of using the data that comes from a time study to make better hiring decisions.
Short - Using a Time Study to Hire the Right People
August 11, 2021 17:00 - 17 seconds - 242 KBA time study will help you understand the work that needs to get done in your business on a deeper level. You'll see how much time your business is spending on different activities during the week. This will give you an understanding of the skill sets that you need in your business as well as the amount of time a new hire would stay busy. Understanding this will help you hire the right people and will help you distribute the work amongst your employees.
Short - Using Excel or Google Sheets to do a Time Study
August 10, 2021 15:00 - 27 seconds - 364 KBExcel or Google Sheets are great tools to use to track a time study. There's a template on the Optimize For Outcomes resource site or you can make your own. You only need a few columns in your spreadsheet. Track the person doing the work (if you have more employees in your business), the system that the work pertains to, a label for the work being done (e.g. "Research Content" or "Write Blog Article" or "Pack Orders"), and the time spent on the work.
Short - How a Time Study Helps You Scale
August 09, 2021 18:00 - 27 seconds - 356 KBPerforming a time study will help you understand and eliminate wasted hours in your business. By reducing waste, that means you're making your business more efficient. When you go to scale your business, you'll need less work to get bigger because you've eliminated waste that would have otherwise scaled along with the revenue. Visit What is a Time Study and How Can it Help Your Business? - Optimize For Outcomes to read more or listen to the longer podcast from the beginning of this week.
What is a Time Study and How Can it Help Your Business?
August 08, 2021 20:00 - 15 minutes - 10.9 MBA time study is a tool that you can use to help make your business more efficient and more effective. It's one of the most common tools that Brian uses with Clients looking to scale their business or get more time back in their day. Follow along while Brian covers some of the benefits of a time study and how to do your own for your business.
Short - Hot to Get Started with Continuous Improvement
August 06, 2021 16:00 - 46 seconds - 583 KBIf you're just getting started with continuous improvement, here's a step-by-step guide on how to approach it. First, define the major systems in your business. What are the things you do to make your business work? Now, identify which one is giving you the most trouble. This could be taking too much time, costing too much money, isn't giving you the outcomes you want, etc. Identify one to three things you could change that you will try over the next month. At the end of the month, see ho...
Short - Using the 5 Whys to Continuously Improve
August 05, 2021 17:00 - 52 seconds - 651 KBA mindset of continuous improvement means you are regularly looking at what you're doing and trying to make improvements. One mental model that will help you do this is the "Five Whys." Anytime you are confronted with a problem you're trying to solve and you ask yourself, "why is this happening?" don't just stop there. Continue asking "why" until you get to a root cause. Five is just an example and not a magic number. Sometimes you need to ask three times and others seven. Keep going unti...
Short - Using Continuous Improvement to Improve Your Hiring
August 04, 2021 16:00 - 41 seconds - 530 KBIf you're hiring or thinking of hiring, you can use continuous Improvement to help you do that. Continuous Improvement is going to help you understand the work that's happening on a deeper level and the documentation you create when continuously improving your business will help you identify who to hire and how much work you have for them to do. It will also serve as training materials when you bring the person on board.
Short - Technology That Can Help You Continuously Improve Your Business
August 03, 2021 17:00 - 58 seconds - 729 KBContinuous Improvement requires continuous tracking of performance. An easy way to do that is to use Excel or Google Sheets to track some basic stats on your systems each week or month. Another tool you can use is a project management application like Asana or Basecamp. Use this to manage the different tasks you want to do to improve your business and prioritize the work needed for improvements.
Short - How Does Continuous Improvement Help you Scale your Business?
August 02, 2021 16:00 - 1 minute - 752 KBContinuous Improvement will make everything you do more efficient. As your business gains efficiency, that makes it easier to scale. When you scale your business, you scale the bad along with the good. If your business is full of inefficiency, that will scale along with the positives, leading to more wasted time, energy, and dollars. By improving what it is you're doing, you will reduce the inefficiency in your systems and business. When you scale, you'll scale with fewer problems and time...
What is Continuous Improvement and How Can You Use it in Your Business?
August 01, 2021 20:00 - 24 minutes - 17.1 MBContinuous Improvement is a mindset that can help all aspects of your business. Use it to improve the efficiency of your systems which will make it easier to scale your business. Improve the way you deploy technology, saving you time and money. Better hire and manage employees, giving them a better experience. Solve problems in an effective and efficient manner. A written version of this appears at https://www.optimizeforoutcomes.com/what-is-continuous-improvement/.
Short - Break a System Down to its Parts and Align the System
July 31, 2021 17:00 - 51 seconds - 647 KBYou can break a system down into its parts and then align those parts to the desired outcomes of the system. Make sure the inputs, process steps, and outputs are needed to achieve the desired outcomes of the system. If anything is out of alignment, make the adjustments needed to get your system aligned.
Short - Align Desired System Outcomes to Your Desired Ultimate Outcomes
July 30, 2021 17:00 - 47 seconds - 592 KBThe desired outcomes of each system should help you reach the desired Ultimate Outcomes of your business. Make sure you're adequately covering your desired Ultimate Outcomes with the systems in your business. If you have a gap, identify it and fix it as appropriate.
Aligning Key Attributes to System Outcomes
July 29, 2021 22:00 - 14 minutes - 10.2 MBAt some point, you have to change what you're doing if you want to get better outcomes. The methodological approach to this is to look at the parts of an individual system. The parts of the system that give you the outcomes that you're getting are inputs, process steps, and outputs. Learn about breaking down the pieces of a system and the questions you want to ask yourself to start Optimizing for Outcomes.
Short - Identify Gaps and Conflicts in Your Systems
July 28, 2021 15:00 - 18 seconds - 256 KBIdentify system conflicts and gaps to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of systems in your business.
Short - Break your Business into Systems for Better Alignment
July 27, 2021 15:00 - 27 seconds - 360 KBTo better align the activities within your business, break the things you do down into systems and relate each system to your desired Ultimate Outcomes (why are you in business?). Each system should have its own desired outcome (why do you want the outputs of this system in your business?)
Short - Define your desired Ultimate Outcomes
July 26, 2021 15:00 - 21 seconds - 294 KBIf you want to get more efficient and quit wasting time and money, start aligning what you're doing in your business. The first step is to define your desired Ultimate Outcomes. Answer the question "Why are you in business? What is it you are ultimately trying to achieve?"
Short - Define your desired Ultimate Outcomes
July 26, 2021 15:00 - 21 seconds - 294 KBIf you want to get more efficient and quit wasting time and money, start aligning what you're doing in your business. The first step is to define your desired Ultimate Outcomes. Answer the question "Why are you in business? What is it you are ultimately trying to achieve?"
System Alignment in Your Business
July 25, 2021 22:00 - 11 minutes - 7.8 MBOne of the biggest sources of waste in a business comes from misalignment of the things a business is doing to the desired outcomes of the business. Systems Thinking can help you see and fix that misalignment to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of your business. This will save you time and money while allowing you to scale more easily.
Short - Improve Anything in your Business with Systems Thinking
July 24, 2021 18:00 - 36 seconds - 462 KBIf you need to improve anything in your business, you can use systems thinking to do it. Systems thinking is all about seeing your business in systems which then allows you to apply mental models and tools to make improvements to the system. Because systems have the same attributes, these tools work on any system in your business, no matter what the system is trying to do.
Short - Develop new products with Systems Thinking
July 23, 2021 16:00 - 29 seconds - 385 KBIf you need to develop a new product, systems thinking can help you do it. Two sides to this… What is the Customer going to do with your product? What do you need to do to deliver your product? You can use systems thinking to help you answer those questions and map out all of the things you need to do to build and release your new product.
Increase Profits in Your Business Using Systems Thinking
July 22, 2021 20:00 - 14 minutes - 10.1 MBI talked earlier in the week about when to use systems thinking in business. One of the outcomes you can achieve by paying systems thinking is to increase profits. I want to dive deeper into that today. Profits is a word that is used in different ways, so let's start by defining profit. Profit is the amount of money your business is bringing in after you subtract the expenses of your business. To understand how systems thinking can help you increase your business's profits, you need to und...
Short - Increase Profits with Systems Thinking
July 21, 2021 16:00 - 38 seconds - 490 KBIncreasing profits is first about increasing efficiency Your business has inputs… resources you need to run your business. Time, software, services, anything you pay money for. Your business has outputs. Sales in the case of profits. Efficiency is the ratio of inputs to outputs. You get more efficient by improving that ratio. Systems thinking can help you increase profits in a few ways - Reduce the cost of the inputs to your business so you get to keep more of the money you earn. Or ...
Short - Scale Your Business With Systems Thinking
July 20, 2021 16:00 - 54 seconds - 678 KBWhen your business is small, you can be disorganized and inefficient. Everything takes more time, but with lower volumes, it's not seen as a big problem. You feel accomplished because you're working so hard for so many hours a day and making money. When you try and scale when disorganized and inefficient, problems get magnified very quickly because scaling your business means scaling those bad outcomes too. More disorganization More inefficiency More problems But the time you have...
Short - When to Use Systems Thinking - to Solve Problems
July 19, 2021 17:00 - 33 seconds - 428 KBUse systems thinking to solve problems in your business. Most problems are because something happened that shouldn't have or something didn't happen that should have. Since systems are how you do things, this means you can use systems thinking tools and mental models to understand what happened and change it going forward.
When to Use Systems Thinking in Business
July 19, 2021 01:00 - 14 minutes - 10.1 MBWhen to Use Systems Thinking in Business After folks start to learn the ins and outs of systems thinking, one of the next questions asked is "when can I use systems thinking in my business?" Before I get into the answer, let's do a quick recap of what systems thinking is and what a system is. Systems Thinking is using a "systems" lens to look at the things that you or your business does. In this context, a system is simply a collection of process steps, technology and/or people that are...
Short - Problem Solve in Your Business with Systems Thinking
July 17, 2021 14:00 - 47 seconds - 590 KBUse systems thinking to understand the root cause of problems in your business.
Short - Systems Thinking Applies to Your Business
July 16, 2021 19:00 - 22 seconds - 301 KBApplying Systems Thinking to your business will make it more effective, efficient, and productive. #systemsthinking #businesstips #smallbusiness #operations
The Four Systems Every Business Must Have
July 15, 2021 19:00 - 11 minutes - 7.71 MBBuilding off the Framework for Systems Thinking In Business, I talk through the four systems that every business must have. Traffic Conversion Delivery Accounting The framework can be viewed/downloaded at https://www.optimizeforoutcomes.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/FLOWDIAGRAM.png