Reviewing Core Processes

Having strong core processes for your business can save untold wasted hours trying to solve the wrong problems. As my clients prepare to roll out processes to their entire organization, they want to ensure they’re followed by all (FBA). To do that, I recommend the leadership team first review core processes together.

Agreement and Finalization of Core Processes

After completing the Three-Step Process Documenter™, the leadership team will have outlined the most important processes for their business. Now the team needs to agree on what each of those core processes includes.

Many core processes integrate efforts between departments. Each department head will want to ensure they agree with each of the defined departmental handoff points.

In addition, the leadership team needs to know what the final output should look like. I’ve had leadership teams hit a roadblock on their process documentation because they didn’t know when the process was complete. They simply didn’t know when the process was good enough to move forward.

Answer Questions on These Five Areas

Ultimately your core processes should capture and clearly define your way of doing them. I’ve worked with multiple teams to solve the issue of “hitting the ceiling” on their process documentation. From those experiences, I recommend you ask these questions to make sure each process is simple and accurate:

1. Secret Sauce

Have you included the unique actions and steps that make you special? Do you deliver on your uniques/differentiators?

2. Issues

Have you identified any overlaps or gaps among processes? Have you correctly made assumptions that another process handles specific steps? Do you see any challenges in implementing these steps?

3. Outcomes

Does each process deliver the outcome(s) you want to see? Is this the best way to achieve the end result?

4. Accountability

Have you identified who owns the steps and actions within each process? Do you know who has the ball when your play is in action?

5. Customers

Have you remembered your customer interactions and communications within each process? Sometimes processes and procedures can have too much of an inward focus and neglect the customer. While it may work for you, it may not always work for your customers.

Once you complete your review and you document each process, you can prepare to have them Followed By All. This will help you get the consistency, profitability, and peace of mind that the EOS Process Component™ can bring to an effective organization that is focused on achieving the Vision.