Spend the extra dollars

Spend the extra dollars to maintain your equipment. Remember, you don’t have to brush all your teeth, just the ones you want to keep.

Seems year after year I was always trying to explain to a few of the managers within my group about the importance of budgeting for the upkeep from the simplest of things like painting interior/exterior walls or upkeep of parking lots, to the maintenance of freezers, centrifuges, and blood/plasma separation equipment devices. You see, in a truly successful operation this budgeted (Dollar amount) grows higher and higher each year with growth and looks to be very easy pickings when pressured for dollars to fill other dollar requirements. I think the old saying “ you gotta dance with who brung ya” started in a discussion over this very subject.

It is really funny, we purchase something one day and the next day we immediately start to depreciate it for our financial needs, while operationally we want to get as much life out of it as possible. We have to not just keep things in good working order, in most cases we must keep them in a “good looking” sense of repair as well.

Are we budgeting yearly to replace certain items that we know will need replacing annually, bi-annually, or within our five year long term planning budget? This is a critical step in keeping us successful/up-to-date with current technologies, moving forward in all aspects of our business.

Can you operate with/plan for/or accept cavities to form within our business? You bet you can! As long as you are in control of and have at least some of the direction. You can fill the cavities to

meet the Quality Assurance Standards (QA) of your company. Just remember in this highly competitive market QA is every thing, and standards of QA must be met.

I will cover in future blogs long term planning, delegation, and short term delegation. However for this example today I must use a few of the rules associated with them.

To make sure you “brush all your teeth” you must delegate! To me this must start in your strategic planning process, allowing the appropriate dollars to be available first. Then a planning process within the walls of the business to monitor/track success throughout the strategic planning time. This can be as simple as a large wall calendar or a computer program.

Of course all of the management team of the business should be well versed in the expectations of the plan, but more importantly the rank and file should know the expectations and goals that need to be met as well.

I have said for years, “ A key tactic to success is to model your business on the distinctions of others---processes, thinking, habits and characteristics.” Your people will win or lose weather all the “teeth” are brushed!