29 June
I love process. Since it’s part of my daily job, that’s probably a good thing. Most business owners, however, don’t understand how powerful process can be.
Honestly, process probably sounds pretty boring to you compared to other things you could be spending your time on. BUT, when you apply process correctly, it works like magic, resulting in simplicity, scalability, efficiency and profitability.
By deciding what the process is for a given function of your business and training everyone to follow it, you will without a doubt, enhance troubleshooting abilities, reduce errors, improve efficiency, and increase your bottom line.
Here’s the thing though, your new process is all well and good and followed until… until an unexpected situation comes along, or workloads are increased, or a team member has a bad day, or a client comes up with an odd request, etc. etc.
You cannot simply write up a new process and hope for the magic to just happen. You need to work with your team over and over again until that new process becomes their default habit. In my experience the best ways to do that are:
- Involve the team when creating the process so you get buy-in early on
- Test the process for a week or so to see what holes present themselves (rework as necessary)
- Sit with your team and explore the possible roadblocks that could come up for them in following the process
- Create a roadmap around those obstacles so they can still follow the process
- Work with your leadership team to make sure they are ALL IN when it comes to enforcing the new process
- Make sure you are following the process, i.e. leading by example – EVERY the time
- Rinse, wash, repeat