Plan-Do-Check-Act

Hi,

When you began your hairdressing career, you probably visualized yourself cutting clients' hair. When you received your training you learned the basic methods of hair cutting. Then you practiced your techniques, received feedback from clients and instructors, learned from your experience, and then applied what you learned to the next cut. Little by little, the shears became more comfortable, the dexterity in your hands improved, the way you "saw" the haircut changed, and soon you developed real skill. Whether you knew it or not, you used a process to learn how to cut hair.

This same simple process can be applied to managing your salon. The process is called Plan-Do-Check-Act and if you apply it to any aspect of your business, your business will improve.

With roots in Scientific Method, PDCA (also known as the Deming Cycle) is a proven business methodology. First we plan for success, then we execute our plans, check our results, and then modify future plans and actions based on how closely our results matched our original plans. Look at the first paragraph again here:

PLAN: "...you probably visualized yourself cutting clients' hair... DO: ...Then you practiced your techniques, CHECK:  received feedback from clients and instructors...and then ACT: applied what you learned to the next cut..." See how simple? Applying it to managing the business side of the salon is just as powerful.

Here’s how it works.

Plan. Countless hours and energy are wasted in business every day because people confuse motion with progress. On a certain level it feels really good to be busy. We get a sense of creating value and being valued for taking action. We get recognition for creating activity and it reflects well on our work ethic. The challenge, as the saying goes, is to “Work smarter, not harder.” The key to working smarter is to have a Plan before we begin. The most important question to ask yourself during the planning phase is, "What is my goal?"

Do. Once we have a plan, we take action. We Do. What we do follows our plan.

Check. Once a portion, or an entire plan, is accomplished it’s time to find out how effective our actions were. How well did our action reach our goal? How efficient were we? How effective were we? Did we learn anything that can help us do a better job next time?

Act. By taking the time to Check, we take the time to learn and set ourselves up to be better in the future and to avoid repeating mistakes. We Act on what we’ve learned by taking the information we’ve gathered and feeding it back into our plans. That way, next time we need to reach the same, or similar, goal we will have a better Plan. Better, because the system we now use to Plan is a learning system.

If you would like to learn how to make PDCA second-nature and apply it to something practical, like your marketing plans for the new year, please don't hesitate to contact me.

Jim Lucas
Séva Education
gojimlucas@sevastyle.com
(925) 980-7871


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