About Simply Kaizen
Simply Kaizen is a consultancy owned and operated by Patrick Flynn, bringing his own experience and support network to advice practices and licensees. Working in advice since 2005, Patrick’s experience spans every aspect of the advice process and management. Having worked with practices nationwide, he is best known for bringing a fresh approach and technology to advice.
You can learn more about Patrick’s experience on his LinkedIn profile here.
It’s Patrick passion for bringing together the win-win-win of client experience, efficiency, and risk management that inspired him to start Simply Kaizen. In addition to his consulting work, Patrick also owns two other initiatives designed to get win-win-win outcomes for advisers and their clients: Simply Advice Websites and Life Goal Cards.
All of management’s efforts for Kaizen boil down to two words: customer satisfaction.
Masaki Imai
Partnership with Crown
In coming together to work with you in partnership, Simply Kaizen and Crown Wealth Group (Crown) bring shared values and commitment to help you create time, create value, and do more.
This partnership builds on the existing benefits provided by Crown, leveraging the Crown brand and scale for those practices that want to invest even further in their growth.
Simply Kaizen offers the following exclusive additional benefits to Crown advisers:
- Existing understanding of your licensee, culture, values, policies, and services.
- Existing client intellectual property and data privacy agreement to make working together easy and secure.
- Opportunities to deepen engagement through our existing Licensee Partnership trading under the Simply Advice Websites brand. (Just make sure you use the CROWN20 discount code!)
- Direct engagement with Crown to help us build our 360 view of your firm.
- Option to pay by invoice or monthly instalments via your brokerage.
- Complimentary one hour initial consultation.
Delivery
As an advice professional, you know the importance of implementation. That advice unheeded isn’t in anyone’s best interests, and that you can execute advice quicker and with less risk than the client can.
Simply Kaizen takes the exact same approach to our work in advice practices.
Below we’ve outlined the approach we take in working with practices and the pricing of different engagement types. Where there is a range, this usually scales with complexity and size of practice.
We often work outside this process, as we drive outcomes tailored to your needs, but this gives an idea.
1. Discovery and benchmarking
At the commencement of any engagement, we get to know you just as you get to know your client. We ask you for the data that may reveal a problem, we meet with you to understand your vision and set guiding principles for our work, we meet with Crown, we cyber-stalk you, if you don’t survey your clients we will, we directly survey and/or interview your staff, and more.
All this ensures that we’re solving the right problems.
There is often a much simpler way of doing things – if you make the effort to look for it.
EDWARD DE BONo
2. Collaboration
Collaboration can very depending on team size and complexity of the problems we’re trying to solve. Generally it starts with a granular understanding of what you do (down to every email, meeting agenda, and checklist), and asking why things are done a particular way.
During this process, we typically engage in a full-day workshop to work on the above and and redesign the process as a team to improve efficiencies, client experience, and risk management. Workshops may also include vision setting, training on how to own continuous improvement, and more as required.
Deliverables
- Report summarising findings with recommendations on the top three areas to improve your business processes.
- Documented process maps
- Documented Work Breakdown Schedule to execute new processes
- Schedule of assets/resources/policies for development
A goal without a plan is just a wish.
ANTOINE DE SAINT-EXUPÉRY
Investment: $4,500 – $12,000
3. Implementation
This stage is simple. We may have a plan, but things need doing, and they’re always harder to take through to being live than you would think.
We always allow a little bit of scope for some execution following a workshop, but things work best when we take the buy in and momentum and jump straight into getting it done. We call this an ‘Implementation Sprint’, which allows a focused period to get quick wins or solve some big problems fast.
By working directly with you to help execute the findings from our collaboration we don’t just realise the benefits sooner, but we greatly reduce the total cost of you working in the unfamiliar.
This can include directly setting up workflows and templates in software, making them live, training team on their use, setting up new software, integrating software, and much more.
Deliverables
- Stuff is actually done, and well.
Without strategy, execution is aimless. Without execution, strategy is useless.
Morris Chang
Investment: $3,000 – $12,000
4. Kaizen
Regardless of whether you’ve come out of a sprint, or you prefer to work on change more gradually, the Kaizen approach argues that we should continuously improve in all things. A small investment, each day, enables a slightly larger investment tomorrow.
Our ongoing engagement options all provide access to an expert partner who understands your business and is there to support your growth.
Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection, we can catch excellence.
Vince Lombardi
Investment:
- Maintain – $500 pm
Exclusive to clients where we have an existing relationship, this includes regular access, research, and scope for minor enhancements to previous work. - Improve – $1,200 pm
When you need some help, but not too much. This works for very small practices or the very time poor, where it’s hard to find the time to even adapt to change.
- Kaizen – $2,400 – $3,000 pm
You want to improve, significantly. This requires a capacity for change, and a desire to realise your full potential. This allows you to delegate responsibilities and authorities to us, we work as a senior partner in your team, and work through executing multiple items every week using the Plan, Do, Check, Act methodology.
Requirements
The investments listed above only cover our direct engagement. At a minimum we will recommend other services which will include a small cost. If that’s something you’ll struggle with, you’re unlikely to get enough value from our work together.
While we’re working on a project, we meet at least once a week. For ongoing clients, it’s no less than fortnightly. This ensures we’re never too far from the same page and we’re always getting stuff done.
Consultation
If you would like to learn more about how we can help Crown advisers like you, book an exclusive 1 hour free consultation here.