How to Improve Your Processes
Figuring out the best workflow or process to get the needed result can be a challenge, to say the least. Especially when the most effective process may require a little more planning and intentionality with each step. Let’s start with a story about my sister and her “process” for dealing with homework for a class.
Going into a semester, my sister was dreading one class. Not because the class would be hard, but because of the professor. He’s one of those older tenured professors who doesn’t seem to fully understand how to use her University’s online learning platform and instead requires students to bring in hard copies of all their homework. He’s also well known for assigning a LOT of homework. Which meant she would need to do a lot of printing… (but she doesn’t own a printer and the class was at 8 am in a building that also… did not have a printer.)
One key thing to mention here is my sister’s knack for, well, procrastinating, and her hatred for early mornings. Assuming she did her usual of waiting to complete homework the night before it was due, she would have to allocate an extra thirty minutes in the morning to make time to get to a school printer to print her homework. It’s arguably an inefficient process. Since we can’t change the habits or requirements of the professor, the best way to improve this process would be for my sister to finish her homework before leaving school the day before (I know, how awful) and print it before leaving campus. This would require an adjustment to her habit of procrastinating work but make the process much more manageable.
Improving Inefficient, Redundant, and Confusing Processes
As we mentioned in our blog 6 Things You Should NOT Automate in Your Business, evolving processes aren’t in a place where they should be automated. The same is true for inefficient processes; while you may not be actively refining or adjusting them, some processes can be inefficient, redundant, or confusing– which means they’ll need to be improved on in order to better support you as your business grows. To simplify this process of refining your processes, we’ll give some tips for identifying what processes may need a little TLC:
- Inefficient Processes
These are processes that take too many steps or too much time for no good reason. To use a favorite analogy of my 9th grade math teacher, you’re going to the moon to get to Walmart. Clean these processes up by removing or reorganizing the unnecessary, time-consuming steps. In the example of my sister’s homework dilemma, she can use a printer at a building that she’ll be at anyways the day before. In business, this can look like ensuring that you’re only doing the steps that are truly necessary to reach the desired outcome and that they are being done in the order that makes the most sense.
- Redundant Processes
Sometimes we have two different processes that could really just be one process, or we have a process with various steps that essentially are leading to the same result. For example, if you are tracking leads in a CRM but are also adding lead info into a spreadsheet or other tool, do you really need both? Probably not. (And if so for some level of reporting needs, I recommend automating the info into the spreadsheet.) As you review your processes, combine the redundant processes and/or process steps to slim it down.
- Confusing Processes
Then there are processes that are just… confusing. These processes have too many intricate, detailed steps that aren’t really necessary to complete the task at hand and put together making the process too complex given its goal. Think of the little domino machines people will make videos of where you have a 15-step chain reaction of dominos, falling hammers, and rolling marbles all to turn on the faucet. It’s confusing, hard to replicate, and often both inefficient and redundant in some way. If your process is confusing, there’s a good chance it’s hard to teach to other people and even harder to automate – take a step back and think about a simpler, more direct way to approach it. Then redevelop the process to be more streamlined.
Hopefully, this can serve as a good starting point for improving any processes in your business that may need some tough love! For more useful advice to grow your business, subscribe to our email list here.
