Habit #2 Begin with the End in Mind
In our first habit: Be Proactive - we spoke about knowing your breakeven. This month, our second habit: Begin with the end in mind – we focus on planning to get your desired results.
Covey explains in his highly acclaimed self-improvement book 'The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People’ that his second habit, suggests that we should begin with the end in mind in everything we do - which means starting everything we do with a clear destination. That way, we can measure our progress and therefore know we are on the right track and can make sure the steps we're taking are in the right direction.
Most of us find it relatively easy to busy ourselves. We even measure ourselves as a form of success on how busy we are or how much busier we are than the next person, we measure ourselves on how busy our car park is for example, full being good and empty being poor. How many times do we hear or say ‘I'm so busy', 'It's been crazy, we are really busy'. 'There’s not enough time in the day’. However, we rarely stop to evaluate the meaning behind this busyness and whether we are hitting the desired outcome.
" Begin with the end in mind means to start each and every day, task or project with a clear objective and visualisation of your desired outcome based on the new day's data and know each milestone to mark each stage complete and successful. "
Visualisation
Building a plan of action by visualising the whole process from start to finish is Covey’s key measure.
Before starting anything, take into consideration your entire value stream and then work on what the finishing line looks like. You can't win a race in the first corner, but you can certainly lose a race at this point, and many do. All too often the desire to rush full steam ahead gets in the way of thoughtful planning. To win the race takes such thoughtful planning, it requires a strategic approach to complete each lap within the desired lap time and stay reliable among other ingredients like a good driver, a good car, and a team. But planning how we will achieve the win is key!
We can tend to spend most of our time concentrating on getting work onto our premises, ‘getting the keys’. It’s ok getting the work, to be busy, but you need to plan how you will process that work; if you can’t complete it in time, it will affect cash flow, customer satisfaction, shop morale, key to key agreements with work providers, etc.
Planning
Production planning is an area that is often under-resourced within many repair facilities. Suppose we are beginning with the end in mind. In that case, we would need to organise and load the correct number of hours per repair phase to balance with the available labour hours (including efficiencies of your team) for an allocated duration. Each department needs to be in harmony - so that no single department is underproducing or overproducing; this will reduce the risk of blockages or bottlenecks as well as running a department dry further down the line.
- Do you have the balance of skilled labour in each work phase to complete the work in the allotted time?
- Does this repeat in each work phase?
If we know when loading our shop what hours are required for a period, then we can accurately forecast that each repair will be finished in time. This helps maintain good customer satisfaction, healthy cash flow, and keeping work providers happy. After establishing this, you can start to build targets to measure improvements and maintain proper balanced production output.
