The Guiding Light of Operations: creating effective and worthwhile processes.
Recovering perfectionist: “someone who is on the path of growth from the constant need to fix, repair, and tinker with the environment around oneself.” This describes me in a nutshell. Not necessarily because I’m somehow rid of these inklings or thoughts to perfect, but more so that I’ve gotten better at being content with how things are. Hence, the “recovering” part. I’m getting better at understanding why something is the way it is instead of rushing headlong into the fray to fix it, just to satisfy my own uneasiness with imperfections. I say all that because the big reason I’m a perfectionist to begin with is due to my natural tendencies towards structure, discipline, and order. Because of this “eye”, inefficiencies and bottlenecks stand out like a sore thumb.
Stay in a business environment long enough and those inefficiencies collide with your everyday tasks in a manner that’s too obvious to avoid at times. No matter the stage of growth, one thing that will hamstring any momentum in the workplace is the red tape of inefficient processes. That’s why when it comes to Organizational Health, the quality and impact of your processes are just as important as the people who lead, guide, and develop the business. The quality of life that your organization has is entirely dependent on both the balance and tension between people and processes. As a business scales, the need for more processes arises. What may have worked with two people in the department realistically isn’t sustainable as the department or team grows. This creates the need for structure. However, inefficient and outdated processes are surefire ways to burn out employees and kill productivity. Henry Ford himself stated that “most people spend more time and energy going around problems than trying to solve them.” This couldn’t be more true of poorly developed processes. So, since red tape is unintentionally present in every business regardless of industry or growth stage, then how exactly does a good process get developed?
The reality is that the most important factor in creating an effective, worthwhile process is one that creates repeatable results. If the process isn’t helping your business repeat the intended outcome or if it’s creating a bottleneck then the process needs to be refined further or could simply not be worth having.
Let’s get more prescriptive here. There are two questions to be answered when creating and refining a process:
- “Is the current process/structure at all effective?”
- “If not, is it worthwhile to update or create a new one in the first place?”
Most of the time the answers to these questions will be fairly straightforward. As I mentioned earlier, a poorly developed or incomplete process most often stands out like a sore thumb.
When it comes to efficiency, the best first step is determining the goal of implementing said process or structure. What problem is being solved for? Is there a new hire assimilation issue? Is there a lack of continuity between how client-facing employees give presentations? On a more abstract level, is the goal of implementing this new standard operating procedure to replicate something or to alleviate something? Get specific with the goal(s). This not only helps responsibility parties track performance before and after, but it also helps the team communicate concisely the why behind this proposed change. For example:
“By introducing this new Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool, we hope to streamline the time it takes to evaluate the data coming from our customer’s actions.”
“By reducing the number of people involved in functional decisions, we hope alleviate unnecessary stress by having too many cooks in the kitchen as well as speed up the time it takes to make decisions.”
“By formalizing our top sales rep’s tactics for winning deals, we hope to replicate the result of closing deals faster across all sales reps.”
Once the goal has been agreed upon or even tentatively decided upon, the next stage of process creation tackles the idea of a worthwhile process. Essentially, is this action/outcome/problem even worth creating a process for?
Picture all of the tedious tasks that you’ve had to follow at some point during your employment. Most of the time it’s these very tasks that are important to the day to day functioning of a healthy business. However, the problem is that some of these disciplines are addressing the symptom of a larger root problem. Or worse yet, are created out of a sense of a lack of control. In unhealthy organizations, in an effort to regain control, leadership or middle management implement standard operating procedures with no clearly communicated goal. It’s at these inflection points where a process is still being formed that the question needs to be asked: “is this event/desired outcome/problem worth instituting a formal process for?” These questions below can help your team gain additional clarity.
“How likely is it that this problem or action will come up again, thus warranting a process?”
“Will it take up more time to create this process than the time this process will save once created?”
“Will this create a bottleneck in current operating procedures? If so, will this bottleneck be worth having the process in place for?”
“As we scale, will this process become outdated or is it futureproof? It may be perfectly appropriate of a solution for the moment but keeping in mind it may need to be adjusted down the line once, x tool or x use case is no longer relevant.”
Ultimately, creating processes is more than simply adding do’s and don’ts to everyday tasks. An effective process will 1) solve more problems than it creates, 2) will replicate favorable outcomes, and 3) ultimately help any business improve its daily operations. At the end of the day, processes magnify the health or failure of your organization. So, instead of creating more red tape, ask yourself, “what if our processes enhanced our employees’ day to day, alleviated time sucks, and replicated results that helped our businesses scale efficiently?”