There’s No Excuse For Insufficient Business Processes

Imagine you hire a homebuilder and asked about his plan. He tells you there is no plan; he’s been doing this for years; he’s just going to go with his gut. Would you give that man the go-ahead to create the home of your dreams?

You would never build a house without a blueprint. You need to have a plan in place – measurements, dimensions, design – in order to transform a barren lot into a structurally sound, efficient, and aesthetically pleasing building. Your business should be treated the same way. There needs to be a plan in place for you to move your ideas and your strategy from conception to completed products and services.

Here at Connections 4 Success, we have heard plenty of reasons why business owners do not have their processes where they need to be. Three recurring reasons come up in conversation more frequently than others. Let’s look at each excuse individually and see how implementing and adjusting the right processes can help the team, create new efficiencies, and solve business problems and pain points.

The First Excuse

“The processes aren’t the problem, the people are!”

The first excuse assumes the current existing processes are sufficient to get all tasks done, but the team is choosing to ignore them. Here’s the thing – no team would openly ignore well developed and efficient processes. If this is happening to you, it’s time to adjust and update.

Good processes help people succeed. If you have all the right processes in place, your employees will always know where they are in the process and what step needs to be taken next. Having inefficient, ineffective, or nonexistent processes leaves your team mostly guessing. Put the right processes in place and set your team up for success.

Solid processes help employees to understand their role in the bigger picture. By understanding how the process works, each employee will understand what it is that they do to contribute to the business’s success. They can understand how their tasks help the company reach short- and long-term goals.

Those same processes also provide quality checkpoints. The hand-offs from one stage of the process to the next allows for a moment where the work can be assessed, and in that moment, you know exactly who to hold accountable for the quality (good or bad) of the work that was performed. If you’re interested in accountability, we have a blog post on the subject which you can access by clicking here.

The Second Excuse

“I don’t have time to perfect every process which occurs!”

The second excuse assumes you are not prioritizing the processes of your business. We get it – being a business leader means you constantly must pick your priorities, and as one person, you only have so much time. It turns out, though, that getting your processes where they need to be saves time for you and your team.

Having the right processes in place saves everyone’s time. That’s because the right processes remove any doubt about what people should be doing. It may seem like a large time commitment up front, but saving time later will help your business run more efficiently, meaning you can create more products or services and become more profitable.

It’s important for a business owner to allocate time to business processes. Processes need to be monitored regularly. Processes can quickly get outdated as the company expands and your industry responds to evolving regulations. By ensuring the processes are improved regularly and proactively, you can create a cycle of constantly growing and innovating – ultimately improving your impact and profits.

The Third Excuse

“I don’t know where to start!”

The third excuse is easy to understand. The first step is always the hardest. If you’re starting at the beginning with your processes, even just having them implemented will allow for the capability to adjust various stages of various products or services creations. Those adjustments can help you gradually improve output, increase customer service, profits, and the impact of your business.

Don’t be afraid to approach your team for guidance. They are the ones who do the actual work every day. They can explain what their tasks are like, how they get from one stage of the project to the next, and generally how their days go. You’ll be able to see how each task influences the other and develop written processes for the whole organization.

If your team is unable to provide you with all the information you need in order to develop your processes, it may be a good time to conduct an evaluation. A thorough evaluation will help you see your organization as a whole and may influence some improvements you make in your processes or other areas of your business. Visit our blog post about Assessing Your Business to learn more about conducting an evaluation.

Do you use any of these excuses?

There is no shortcut when it comes to developing, implementing, and improving business processes. The processes that are created with your particular strategy, goals, and values in mind are the only ones that will serve your business well. Create your blueprint and achieve your goals.