Numbers are the universal language
And they tell the most truthful story there is. And most successful business owners run a tight ship – they know every metric that’s useful in managing the business. Spread sheets, cheat sheets, checklists, knowhow – they’re all valuable. But to a new owner or investor, these can’t replace the attraction of a systemised business. We help optimise your systems & processes with minimal time & effort. In 4 – 6 weeks, you’ll see emphatic improvements.
7 ideas to improve your systems and processes
1. Broaden your horizons
Most change requests in a company come from within IT. But all of your employees should also be taking an active role in requesting process additions or changes. Employees are more business savvy that you might think. And they certainly know how to simply and streamline their job. Start listening to their needs more closely and consider making the changes they ask for.
2. Small, quick, frequent changes
If you’re stuck reviewing and making nig changes every couple of months or quarter, you’re essentially driving a truck through busy streets when you should really be on a scooter. Business methods and technology move at a pace faster than ever before. Process change must adapt to meet that higher rate of speed. Consider smaller, more frequent changes, as opposed to queuing multiple changes that are all made in a big push.
3. Test, test and test some more
With today’s modern technology and systems, it’s easier than ever to build a test environment that closely mimics the actual business situation. Duplicating real word environments is a snap, and it will tell you if your assertions are correct, your strategies are sound and whether your execution is effective.
4. Don’t be afraid to fail and fallback
Customers demand that changes happen faster than ever before, which makes it more likely that some of your efforts will fail. Do your best to get it right the first time, but don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Instead, have a plan in place to back out of changes if things go badly. Fallback procedures should be considered as important as planning for the actual implementation.
5. Run small meetings
We’ve noticed in recent years that the number of attendees at change control meetings has ballooned as companies looks to cover all the bases. We’ve seen meetings that could fill an auditorium. If that’s true for you, pare down your attendee list. Two goals of any change control meeting are to inform and identify. You want to keep other parts of the company informed about pending changes and what the expected impact will be. And, you want to identify any changes to one part of the business that could have a negative impact on other parts of your infrastructure. To streamline this process, invite only the most necessary people and rely on them to disseminate information to their teams as needed.
6. Stop bothering the change-makers
For critical and complex changes, all eyes are on those doing the work. And please know that it’s completely useless for managers to “check in” to see how a change is going during an implementation phase. If you trust your people to make such important changes, you must also trust them to reach out to you if and when they experience challenges and problems. If they’re not contacting you, leave them alone and let them do their job.
7. Document your successes and failures
We often see companies fail to document what actually happened during a change window. What are the objectives, metrics and improvements? Often when people do manage to document what happened, it’s only in cases when a change failed. Changes should be well documented by those involved, whether they are successful or unsuccessful. Doing so creates a history of what worked and what didn’t, and those lessons can be used in future changes that might be similar.