Taking the Pain out of Process!

Why is it that so many businesses are full of great people, and many also have great technology, yet some days seems to be SUCH hard work just getting the most basic things right? There can be many long meetings that are focused on what’s going wrong and what needs to be fixed… And then there’s that awful demotivating question of “who is to blame”? 

I am a total geek when it comes to processes (my nickname in my last role was the Queen of Process!) and a really fun day for me involves helping teams that are experiencing these sorts of issues. Poor process doesn’t just affect productivity, it affects the whole culture, which can potentially ruin an otherwise great business. 

I run workshops that teach Managers and Leaders strength based tools to build focused, collaborative teams. Together we boost their efficiency and productivity by streamlining processes, which of course results in a better bottom line profit! The tools I use are based on Lean principles, but in my experience they are easier to grasp than the slightly outdated Lean 6 Sigma. They bring sustainable continuous improvement, with a byproduct of real employee motivation and engagement because teams are creating the changes themselves as opposed to having change forced upon them.

People are always time poor these days, and business can be tough, but when processes work smoothly you can eliminate the annoying distractions, and get on with the important (and more shiny!!) stuff that brings real growth. And because I believe happy people are always more effective, I make sure that we have a lot of fun together doing it! 

Here’s a great example of the power of a good process; a supply chain team I worked with previously were described by their Manager as all individually great people, very dedicated to their work with a lot of experience, and doing what they believed was best for their particular area of responsibility, which in isolation was mainly true. However, every season the same issues came up again and again. The weekly meetings were like a Mexican stand-off where they all sat pointing fingers at each other, all 100% confident that their part of the process was perfect, and that it was “the others” that were causing the problems and needed to change. 

I held an intervention workshop alongside their Manager that literally started with a group of eight very defensive looking people with arms firmly folded firmly across their chests. You could almost hear them thinking “it’s not ME that needs to change”!!!

Within half an hour, using a few exercised to get them sharing, I had them relaxed and chatting openly about their desire for things to work well, and by the end of the day’s session they had created a mission statement that they were all 100% supportive of, they had a really simple blueprint for what a great process would look like, they had the steps needed to get from where they currently were to greatness, and were willingly volunteering to follow up with immediate actions in a challenging timescale. Best of all, they created it themselves so left the room feeling confident, and positive about the changes. 

It was fantastic to watch them open up and really appreciate and want to help each other. The following season they were able to report many improvements in their statistics; order entry errors down from 30% to 3 %, late deliveries from 20% to 2%, and in their peak period, instead of needing the usual 14 temps in the warehouse for 12 weeks, they coped easily with 12 temps for just 10 weeks, which was a 30% reduction in the cost. 

I sat in on a few of the weekly meetings that next season, and when they faced new obstacles, they were able to approach them differently (still using the blueprint as their reference of what great looked like) and resolved them in minutes rather than the days of endless emails (and finger pointing) that it took previously.

That’s why I love a good process workshop! It’s a proven method that ensures that everyone in the business is motivated to continuously improve the way things work in a very collaborative way, giving them more time to focus on the areas that add real value to their customer. I would love to hear from anyone who feels they may benefit from a little “process intervention”!!

Lorna Stellakis - A woman on a mission to help as many people as possible to look up from their shiny screens and really connect with their co-workers (or whoever is around them that day) so that they can collaborate, learn from each other, become more productive, more efficient, and figure out what will make their day really great!! If you really look, the world is a lot shinier than those little screens… Look me up on LinkedIn or drop me a tweet @LJS_LORNA