Catalog Doctor: Stop Wasting Resources

Q5. Why are you sitting down at this meeting?
Meetings can be productive — like daily team meetings when in the throes of production. But limit meetings that require sitting in a conference room.

What a waste. Sitting encourages rambling and filling time. Instead, try a stand-up meeting. If no one can sit down, everyone will get antsy to stop in 10 minutes to 15 minutes, focusing them on just what’s must-do, must-know.

Try limiting topics to, “What do you need from the other people here?” If a longer discussion is needed, use the stand-up meeting to set a time for an additional, special focus meeting for just those who need to attend.

Q6. Has your team learned the tools it already has?
An hour of waste here and there adds up to too much waste at the end of the year. And that’s what happens when staffers don’t know how to use their tools well. So they experiment and fail, and try the same things over and over.

What a waste. This isn’t just with spreadsheets and word processors. I’ve seen huge time wasters involving catalog management systems when no one’s read the manual or taken the training. A month of trying to extract sales for a report, or download the house list for updating to the co-ops, is wasted. Then you have to contract with a programmer to do it.

Or, no one knows how to upload National Change of Address data into the system. That results in a dirtier house list and more money paid to the merge/purge house for work that should have been quick and easy.

In many cases, the right training can save an entire person’s salary.

Q7. Will your customers love this?
Ask this question all the time, every time.