The key to a successful process improvement initiative is in its execution.
What we normally do in improving a process in business is establish priorities based on a problem to be fixed. Organizations tend to devote so much time fixing one area of the business.
For example, a company makes a quarterly prioritization around onboarding and doing this massive optimization of onboarding. This never works because what happens when you improve only one area or one department is that everything else does not match the same level of quality–giving customers an inconsistent experience.
Here’s what you should do instead:
👉Improve processes across the entire customer experience
Instead of zooming in and improving one department or one area only, you’re looking high and wide across the entire customer life cycle from Presales to Follow-Up & Repurchase. Then you aggregate your improvements together because the power of process improvement is in the accumulation of the tiny things you are improving.
When identifying process problems to solve, prioritize the ones that improve your customer experience and drive value. They are completely equitable. Identify the ones that are going to drive the most ROI in the shortest amount of time. Prioritizing problems to solve sets the scope for your improvement.
👉Put a time limit and set a Go-Live
Once you identified the problems to focus on, set a time limit of 30 days to develop improvements or what we call countermeasures. In general, you are looking at about 20 improvements in one go-live. You set a go-live date for every version of your improvements. This way, you have a clear delineation when your people can say from that day onwards we do things this way. You roll out versions of improvements just like product development.
There is a three-to-four-month lead time for every version. After three to four months, you roll out another 20 improvements. Then you continue to roll out versions until you’re sustaining a level of quality, meaning you are able to drive consistency in your processes. Only when you are able to deliver the same way, the right way every time that you can go drive differentiation.
The importance of a Go-Live in process improvement
It is typical to have a “go-live” when deploying a new system or software into production. But rarely do we hear about releases of improvements in the customer experience and human operations. As a result, companies remain stagnant. They’re growing in different directions. When you improve processes in random directions what happens is that people are afraid to grow because they think things are going to break down. They don’t close the next deal or bring on a new partner because they’re barely surviving. You are leaving money on the table.
Systems Thinking
Instead of doing one big initiative by department, improve your processes across the entire customer experience and do it by parameters of time. Doing these two things will not only help you manage the peaks and valleys of growth in your business, but it can make you lead the competition. You can become number one and establish a reputation where everyone comes to you to see what is being done next in the industry.
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I typically have only worked with clients over a year-long container to help them implement the steps I spoke about above. That is until now.
For the first time ever, I’m making such a valuable part of my services available to you over the course of two days.
Introducing The Flowstate Workshop.
This 2-day virtual experience will take you and your senior leaders through a tool to map out your flow of goods and information over time. In simple terms – it’s Toyota-style process mapping.
To learn more about this workshop, click here.
I’d love to help you and your business create a finished flow that is so good you’ll want to show everyone!
You can apply here now!
