Open those peepers…Goldilocks and…

Open those peepers…and open more business

When it comes to “eyeballing” as a method to diagnose an operation’s shortcomings, the on-premise laundry tops the list. As we were all taught early on, linens are supposed to be white, bright and fresh smelling. If any one of those conditions isn’t in place, there’s a problem. We can learn a lot about what might be lurking behind a failing in any one of them, but only if we look.

For starters we need to expand our visual inspection to include other issues like greying and yellowing. One simple tool to unearth either of those two problems is to use a white handkerchief as a basis for seeing the difference between the present condition of the linens and what they could (or ought to) be.

If we see yellowing, we can probably bank on inadequate rinsing or seriously overloaded wash wheels. If there’s greying, it’s possible that they have hard water and a detergent that’s not sequestering those minerals. If we see winkles, we might want to look at the length of the extract cycle or drier temperatures. Of course if there’s staining that opens another area of concern. And if it’s all the above, it’s inconsistency at play.

Yep, truth is the laundry is a target rich environment for eyeballing the situation. And then either using what we see to better our accounts’ results, or use that insight as an avenue to sell a new one.

Next up: Dealing with the rainbow result.

 

Goldilocks and …Creating goals

Goals are a funny thing. Make them too ambitious and you invite failure. Be too conservative and you court mediocre results. Like the children’s fairy tale the trick is avoiding “beds” that are either too hard or too soft. We need “beds” and goals that are well, just right. 😊

Ordinarily we’d figure that abiding by the rule of creating goals that are Believable, Achievable and Measurable covers the issue. Certainly if those three are satisfied, chances are pretty good that the target will be within reach. But if a goal is too conservative it might well meet the BAM measure but be less than what’s needed to get us where we want to be.

So maybe we need to add the letter “S” to that anagram. That addition stands for Satisfactory. Simply stated, is the target satisfactorily ambitious? If the answer to that question isn’t a clear yes, we’re clearly aiming too low and need to bump it a bit. But after we do that, we also need to be sure it still passes the believable and achievable and measureable measures. If it does, we’ve hit the Goldilocks spot.

Next up: That pesky measurable issue.