Inefficient processes occur in almost every company. However, you want to work them out as quickly as possible. After all, they often cost money, and they keep you from your important tasks. But: how do you pick out the inefficient processes?
Where is your energy going?
As an entrepreneur, you deal with three important types of processes. First, your primary process. This is the process that is aimed at the service you provide. Our primary process at Wise Minds, for example, is making software. But within a company, you also need governing and supporting processes. With governing processes, you consider how you want to shape your services, and how you ensure that your quality is high. It’s about planning and strategy. Supportive processes are, for example, sending status updates to your customer, requesting information, and other things that ensure that your primary process runs in the best way.
So how exactly do you notice which processes run efficiently? In my opinion, the first important thing for entrepreneurs is to map out what they are doing, and where their time, and the time of their employees, is exactly going. If 95 percent of the time is going to supportive processes, then something is wrong. Then you’re dropping the ball. After all, you then have too little time left for your primary and governing processes. The focus should primarily be on the primary processes.
You could also look at each employee: is the person engaged in processes that fit their role? And which process do you need the most manpower for? If you have more customer service employees in a software company than programmers, that’s also a sign that something is not going well. The big question is: where is the energy of your company going?
Alarms that Ring
The moment a process runs efficiently, there are several alarm bells that could ring. For example: you miss deadlines. Or: the quality is not good enough again and again. You haven’t had the time to improve the quality. You know that it should have been done, but you didn’t get to it. Why not? Probably because you were too busy with other processes that actually shouldn’t require that much energy.
When our company was still in its infancy, we also noticed that there was a leak of energy somewhere. We spent a lot of time correcting errors in systems. This led to complaining customers and kept us busy for days. Where was the inefficiency?
We didn’t have a quality assurance department. It was up to the programmer to test his own work. We discovered that this is not a smart choice. We tend to quickly overlook our own errors. In our case, the four-eyes principle of quality assurance patched up a leak of energy.
Entrepreneurs Need a Mirror
An inefficient process is often discovered more quickly if someone from the outside looks along. This is also what we help our customers with. We ask them the question: how do you manage your time? Then, nine out of ten entrepreneurs already know where it goes wrong. But when you probe further, the solution often surfaces. Entrepreneurs often know themselves well enough, but they may still need that mirror.