Starting a New Business Series – Part 10
Hello fellow entrepreneurs!
Last week, I wrote about some ways (not email) to share files with your team to improve collaboration. I covered a few options but didn’t go into a lot of depth as I try to keep this blog fairly top level so it makes sense to all the non-technical folks out there. I’d rather you focus on running your business and hire somebody like me to deal with all those technical issues for you, as it will let you do what you love without all the headaches. This week I was going to write about backups, but I had other things on my mind, so I’ll get back to the backups another day. Instead, I’d like to talk about your business processes. Let me elaborate…
All too often I’ve witnessed business processes that make no sense to an outside observer. They don’t work, waste your time and money and are fundamentally broken. In the heat of daily battle, we’ve all done it. We come up with a solution on-the-fly, made of duct tape, wishes and rainbow unicorns, to remove a roadblock from our path. Then we move on to the next fire and forget all about the patch job we made. The patch job then becomes the standard, which your team continues to use since “why fix it if it ain’t broke” right? This is all well and good, and is in fact normal, at least in the observations I’ve made in my travels. Eventually this patch job becomes ingrained in the very foundation of your business. New employees join the team and watch in horror as other team members deploy “the fix”, not understanding why anybody would do things this way. When they ask, they’re just told “that’s what we’ve always done”, quickly subduing any opinions or solutions they might have, because they’re new and don’t know the lay of the land yet. The solutions quickly die as the new employee gives up all hope of ever fixing this horrific process. We’ve all been there and you know exactly what I’m talking about. If you don’t, trust me, it’s there, you may just not be seeing it.
What we’ve (all) failed to do is circle back around once those fires die down and revisit some of those patch jobs. If we don’t do this, the number of these types of broken processes will slowly add up and after a few years, you have yourself a certified disaster.
There are many ways to deal with processes, but I propose a very simple solution to these kinds of problems, that I already alluded to above. What if instead of becoming offended or adversarial when a new team member asks why you’re doing things this way, you take it as a learning opportunity for yourself? What if you looked at the new eyes on your processes as a gift? Something you would have had to pay a consultant like myself a lot of money to sort out. Hear me out.
When you bring a new person onto your team, you have a VERY brief window of opportunity to extract insights from them with the fresh perspective they bring. This window closes very quickly as the person gets sucked into the company culture and way of doing things. So what if you put on your observation hat for the first week or two as you train a new team member, and really, really paid attention to the questions they asked? What if you even carried around a notepad with you to write down some of the great questions? Further, what if you sat down and pondered some of their questions to consider why do you really do it that way? You could even turn it into a learning opportunity for your whole team. It could go something like this:
“Hello everybody, thanks for taking the time to join my impromptu meeting today! I wanted to gather you all together to help solve some problems that might be standing in the way of our greatness. There is a lot of knowledge and experience in this room that we can bring to bear on any obstacle. We have a unique opportunity today to experience one of our processes through brand new eyes, through our new team member Grace. I’d like us all to see the process through her eyes, and see if we can identify where there are problems and if there are some quick win opportunities to fix them. As I was training Grace, the questions she asked got me thinking that there must be a better way to do this. Let’s spend a few minutes mapping out this process with sticky notes and see if we can pin-point exactly where the problems lie. Then we can solve them together and make all our lives a little easier.”
That should paint a picture of what I’m talking about. What if you spent one hour every week doing this with your team? If you think that’s a waste of time, think about how many hours of effort one hour of problem solving could save your company in a year. I think if you added it up, you might be absolutely shocked. I know because I used to work for a consulting company where we helped teams through this process. The financial savings of a little bit of teamwork and problem solving were astonishing. The productivity increases were amazing. The stress level decreased and people started enjoying their jobs again.
What if you made it a point to do this once this week and see what happens? If you don’t have a new team member for that fresh perspective, just ask your existing team what part of their daily process causes them the most frustration. I’m sure you won’t have a problem getting responses to that. Stick them all up on the wall and have your team prioritize them. Then start picking one to work on each week. First all the low hanging fruit will come to the surface, then once you’ve done the easy work, all the foundational problems will surface. This can be frustrating but oh so liberating. This is truly working on your business and will reduce or eliminate all those fires you’ve been trying to put out. Work life balance…here you come!
As always I want to leave you with some words of encouragement. You are not alone. You are not the only one experiencing these kinds of process problems as your business grows. Reach out to friends or others in your industry and make a point to surround yourself with a support system that understands where you’re coming from. If it means joining an organization like your local chamber of commerce and going out for lunch with another business owner regularly, go for it! You can support each other through the tough times and share some of your tools and tricks to help each other out. Don’t get discouraged. Cleaning up the messes from the foundations of your company is something every organization goes through. The good news is that you can fix it, and have fun doing it in creative ways. If you ever need help with this process, just add me to your toolbox and I can help bring a fresh perspective to your team!
Please don’t forget to visit my website and subscribe to get my weekly blog in your inbox.
Until next time,
Ernst Bergen
B.Sc. Mech. Eng.