Why don't more Small Businesses look at improving their business processes?

In this time of recession, many organizations are looking to reduce costs. They typically look at traditional ways to reduce costs. That may mean buying less of something reducing staff, getting cheaper products or whatever.

Most small businesses probably think that process improvement is something that only applies to large organizations, and is too expensive and not enough value for small business.

There are many stories of process improvement in large business, and the costs of doing it, as well as the difficulty in doing it. Many of these stories show how the improvements can result in big savings that can only be found in big porganizations.

While it's true that big organizations can find big savings, they also have big challenges to face. It is very hard to get a big organization working together to achieve these big goals because they have BIG communication problems. Process improvement is not hard. It is simple and straightforward. Communication is hard. Because the management team doesn't communicate their goals effectively, different people in different parts of the organization are operating on different goals. This is what causes the problem.

Most people work in isolation, not recognizing that what they are doing is having a negative impact on what somebody else is doing. This is where a lot of time is wasted. By getting everybody to look at the same process and see the inefficiencies and waste, they understand what is happenning and the problems are typically easy to fix and don't cost a lot of money.

There are times when major changes are needed and they cost a lot of money. However, it is often possible to make small changes that can have a 10, 2 or 30% improvement with minor expenditures.

How can we educate business owners that this is possible?