“Start with a simple flowchart,” explains Ilene Marcus, Founder and CEO of Aligned Workplace. Using the information you discover in that first step, build a visual representation of the process to help guide you. ![]() Take the time to play this game of tag - it’s sure to help you do a deep dive into your current processes. But, you’d be surprised by how many managers fail to enlist the insights of their team before charging ahead with a new process. This approach seems painfully straightforward. “Keep tracing the chain all the way back to the salesperson who sold the product in the first place,” Bachman says. Then, you’ll approach the person that was mentioned and repeat that same questioning. “Then ask the person who collects money, ‘Walk me through your portion of the process, step by step.’ As soon as the person mentions some piece of information that they get from someone else ask, ‘How do you get that information? Who do you get that from?’” “Start with a known business process such as, ‘We collect money from our customers and then we pay bills,’” says Will Bachman, Co-Founder of Umbrex and a McKinsey-trained operations expert. After all, they’re the ones that are in the trenches and actually knee-deep in your processes day in and day out. This means that you’ll need to work closely with your team to truly understand how they work. Your main goal is to get an in-depth view of how tasks and information flow through your team-not just a broad, high-level overview from where you sit. So, shining a spotlight on your current processes will involve a little bit of work. However, you might be surprised by how much is unsaid (and undocumented) -particularly when you have long-standing team members who just know to get certain things taken care of, whether they’ve been instructed to or not. Some people believe that identifying the way things currently get done is an easy task. How to identify your current work process And, adjusting your work processes all begins with identifying your current ones. However, processes aren’t designed to be stagnant-they should change as your team, objectives, and resources change. Why are these processes important? They keep your team on the same page, while also ensuring that everybody has a clear idea of what needs to be accomplished and where their piece fits into the whole puzzle. ![]() Whether it’s cranking out a specific report or launching an entirely new product, there is usually a systematized flow of information and a standard set of tasks that need to be completed by your team. If you want to boil that down into a more straightforward definition: your work processes are standard ways that important things get accomplished. They are the processes that involve the majority of your organization’s workforce and produce customer, stakeholder, and stockholder value.” ![]() The Baldridge Glossary explains that “The term ‘work processes’ refers to your most important internal value creation processes. How do you go about identifying your team’s work processes and then tweaking them accordingly? Here’s everything you need to know: What are work processes? Because change is the only constant on your team, and your processes need to mirror this. You need to be consistently evaluating them to identify what’s not working, and then use that information to build more ideal systems for your team. Work processes are the glue that holds things together and ensures that tasks are completed in a way that’s systematic, organized, and involves as few dropped balls as possible.īut, here’s the thing about your processes: they shouldn't be operated with a “set and forget” mindset. Yet, far too often, leaders and managers instruct their teams to stick to the same outdated process-all while expecting different results. While there’s some disagreement over who that impactful quote should be attributed to (sources range from Henry Ford to Tony Robbins), there’s no denying that the message holds some weight. “If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always gotten.” ~ Unknown
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