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Surviving in a Strange Familiar World - John Benjamin, Founder, Business Engineering Consortium

S urviving in a tornado of epic proportions. It seems like we are living in a tornado of change equal only to what swept Dorothy to OZ. With this whirling, hot mess the world is in it is more important than ever before that we stay grounded and focused. Business owners today, especially those with about 100 employees, are concerned with: • Employee retention NFIB Survey data • Attracting new talent NFIB Survey data • Growing the top line • Moving more of their top line to the bottom line Keeping these concerns in balance is critical to long-term success. How can you as a busy owner effectively balance these concerns? The Optimization Zone tool is just what you need. Based on our experience with 100’s of clients, we developed a comprehensive tool we call the Optimization Zone or OZ for short. Like Dorothy in The Wizard of OZ, our clients want to stay on the “yellow-brick” road to success. What the OZ does is provides an owner and their trusted staff with a no holds barred assessment of their business. This is a comprehensive review. Just like Dorothy and her traveling companions each providing valuable input and help on the journey, each business function has a vital role to fulfill in achieving repeatable success. Each area also needs the right amount of support to fully contribute to the organization’s continued growth.

What the OZ does is provides an owner and their trusted staff with a no holds barred assessment of their business.

Many assessments focus on a single area of your business; maybe it is finance or production or sales. Few, if any, provide a comprehensive look at your overall business. If you are a large corporation, you can afford one of the top 10 consulting firms to come in and provide you with this type of assessment. For the smaller growing business, these services are out of reach, that is until now.The Optimization Zone was developed to help serious profit minded business owners with a tool to guide their growth. The OZ measures Leadership, Operations, Finance, Sales, Strategy, Company Culture, Customer Service and Business Development. The OZ breakthrough is in how this data is presented. Most, if not all assessments end up on the shelf after their first review. A few lucky assessments get turned into strategy and acted upon. The OZ is unique. Taking a cue from the heads-up display used in modern aircraft the OZ presents your business with an operating envelope. This envelope is designed to assure balanced supportive growth for your entire organization. Just like your products which are an elegant balance of form, function, and cost; failing to balance your business will lead to premature failure.

The OZ data is consolidated into a radar style plot. The groundbreaking part is the creation of a custom operating envelope, specifically designed for your

John Benjamin

business based on your data. This envelope is created using a proprietary algorithm that provides a visual reference of the imbalances within your organization. For example, if sales are operating outside of the “envelope” and your operations department is near the bottom of the envelope, you have to make a hard choice. Invest in operations to get them back in the middle of the envelope or throttle back sales. How is your staff holding up in all of this? The OZ with its heads-up design provides you that data at a glance. When sales outsells the factory capability, the employees on the factory floor feel it most acutely and morale drops out of the bottom of the envelope. Your customized heads-up display shows this relationship. Having the status of your entire organization in one comprehensive easy-to-read graphic supports real time decision making that is based on a holistic approach. Recognizing that morale is suffering despite growing sales alerts, you need to shift some of your focus to the current company culture, otherwise you’ll be looking for good employees to replace those you lost. The assessment can be updated by the owner, and the Business Engineering Consortium will create a new OZ graph using their proprietary algorithm. The owner can print out and refer to this new graphic as they move confidently forward. Keeping an organization balanced is key to long term success and the OZ is a tool that will help you have balanced, profitable growth. See our ad in Manufacturing Technology Insights for a free copy of the Optimization Zone Assessment.

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