Day in and day out, I speak with clients, colleagues, friends and fellow business owners about daily operations within their organizations. The recurring theme is that a large majority of them complain about having to do the same tasks and action items over and over again. This can be extremely frustrating on a daily basis when you are trying to grow your business, not to mention boring!
I spend a lot of time with my staff working to implement repeatable and reproducible processes so that we can “set it and forget it” so-to-speak and move on to more value added activities. Wouldn’t it be ideal to have your business completely automated and only have to check-in on it daily or weekly? Well, this is not an easy task to accomplish but definitely one worth pursuing.
Below are the 7 key steps that you should take to move towards a repeatable operation:
1. Create a manual process that works. Make sure that you can walk before you run.
2. Optimize each process then document. I find that creating process maps is a great way to visually understand what it going on. You can use tools like Visio or Powerpoint to accomplish this.
3. Group the processes by either business function or job role. Ex.) All processes to do with selling a house should be in the Sales function or the Sales Manager role in my business.
4. Schedule “Process Optimization and Automation” meetings with each of the key stakeholders on your team which utilize and own each process. The goal of these meetings is to assess where the possible automation opportunities lie. Make sure that you identify what the role of each automation point is first (business requirement) before you identify solutions. It is much easier to adapt solutions for automation later once you understand what the purpose is.
5. Implement new technologies to automate each process point. Look to group where possible.
6. The last step is to create a control plan for the overall process. This ensures that the new solution does not operate out of the acceptable result in the future. A great example of this would be to setup an email alert to be sent to the Sales Manager when a property is on the market 60 days or greater.
7. As part of the control plan, always setup a regular review process with the key stakeholders so that the process and your business can benefit from continuous improvement actions.
Practice these simple techniques on a regular basis and you will find that your business will not only grow, but your staff will be happier because they will be making a change as they grow in their roles.
Take care and good luck,
Mike
