A time of reflection

Dec 26, 2013

I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday celebrating with friends and family. The holidays can be an exciting time but also can be stressful and difficult for many people. I’ve heard stories recently of tragic events, but also there are some great stories out there about some really great people. I am sure by now you have heard about the WestJet airlines present give away. If you haven’t seen the video it is a must see. Just shows there are still some really great people out there. Also there was a local story in my area about some good guys who saved Christmas for a family’s whose home with their Christmas presents was unreachable due to flooding. Sadly there were stories of accidents and tragedy as well, which are never easy, but are all too difficult at Christmas. There are families who are separated by miles who cannot spend the holiday’s together and there are families close by that choose to stay apart. I wish all reading this a wonderful remainder of 2013.

It is easy to reflect on our personal life and think about everything we wished we had done, or even that we hadn’t, but do we include our work life in that? Are there things at our job that need to be improved upon or things that we keep putting off? Do we say maybe next year?

Maybe your operations are not quite as smooth as you would like them to be. Each person basically knows what their job is, but no one else quite knows what anyone else is doing, and many tasks seem to either overlap or get missed altogether. Wouldn’t it be nice to have an organized manual that directs each person as to what their role is and allows anyone to quickly fill another’s shoes-keeping your operations running smoothly? If you answered yes to that, then maybe it’s time for an operations review!

Or maybe it’s your costing figures. You’ve known for a while that your numbers just cannot be right and that they are not reliable at all, but you’ll get to that later. Stop making bad decisions because you do not have good information.

Another big issue I often see is an outdated or unusable software system. Does everyone have their own Excel spreadsheet calculating something a little bit differently because no one is using the software system? It’s time to get the necessary training to use your system correctly, or to get a better system.

Whatever is necessary now is the time to make the changes to make 2014 the best year ever. Remember you do not have to do it alone either, just have to admit it needs to be done and see that it gets done!

Categories: Cost Accounting