Key Takeaways
- Identify business process problems by listening to complaints about inefficiencies.
- Focus on frequent, manual, and repetitive tasks that waste time and resources.
- Examine handoffs between people or departments as they often create delays and misunderstandings.
- Pay attention to workarounds, as they may indicate deeper issues in the processes.
- Start small by asking your team about one time-consuming task and improve it incrementally.
Estimated reading time: 4 minutes
Most business owners can name at least one process that causes frustration.
Maybe customer information gets entered into multiple systems. A report has to be assembled manually every Friday. Someone has to remember to follow up on new inquiries. An invoice gets delayed because information is waiting for approval.
None of these problems may seem serious enough to justify a major project. But repeated hundreds of times throughout the year, small inefficiencies can quietly consume a surprising amount of time and money.
The first step in process improvement is not automation or new software. It is simply identifying where friction exists.
Start With What People Complain About
One of the easiest ways to find process problems is to listen for recurring frustration.
Statements such as these are useful clues:
- "I have to enter this twice."
- "I am waiting for someone to send me the information."
- "I have to check three different places."
- "Sometimes this falls through the cracks."
- "Only one person knows how to do this."
- "We have always done it this way."
Each of these statements points toward a process worth examining.
Lean improvement methods often refer to activities that consume resources without adding value as waste. You do not need to run a formal Lean program to use the concept. Simply ask whether each step in a process helps produce the result the customer or business actually needs.
Look for Repetition
Frequency matters.
A ten-minute inconvenience that happens once a year probably does not deserve much attention. A ten-minute inconvenience that happens twenty times every day might.
Look for tasks that are:
- performed frequently
- highly manual
- repetitive
- dependent on copying information
- dependent on someone remembering the next step
- regularly delayed
These are often good candidates for improvement because even a small change can have a meaningful cumulative effect.
Follow the Handoffs
Many process problems happen when work moves from one person, department, or system to another.
A salesperson hands an order to operations. Operations sends information to accounting. A website form creates an email that someone manually enters into a CRM.
Every handoff creates an opportunity for delay, missing information, misunderstanding, or duplicate work.
When reviewing a process, ask:
- Who starts the process?
- Who receives the information next?
- What information do they need?
- Where is that information stored?
- What happens if something is missing?
Pay Attention to Workarounds
Workarounds are especially valuable clues.
Employees are often very good at finding ways around broken processes. They create spreadsheets, email themselves reminders, maintain personal lists, or develop unofficial procedures that keep work moving.
Those workarounds may solve an immediate problem, but they can also hide the underlying issue.
If an important process relies on a spreadsheet that only one person understands, the spreadsheet may not be the problem. The real problem may be that the business never created a reliable process for managing that information.
Ask One Simple Question
You do not need to conduct a company-wide process improvement initiative.
Start by asking your team:
What is one thing we do regularly that takes more time or effort than it should?
Write down the answers.
Do not try to solve everything immediately. Look for patterns, especially problems that happen frequently or affect several people.
That list becomes your starting point.
Small Problems Can Be Good Opportunities
Process improvement does not need to begin with the biggest problem in the company.
In fact, starting with a smaller, clearly defined process is often more practical. It gives the team an opportunity to understand the problem, make a change, measure the result, and learn from the experience.
That approach closely resembles the continuous improvement philosophy found in Lean and Kaizen. Instead of waiting for a massive transformation, the organization builds improvement through a series of practical changes.
Find one source of friction. Understand it. Improve it. Then move to the next one.
