As a performance management software company, we’re constantly interacting with organizations that want to do better, not only from a strategy point of view, but also in the way they work. Strategy execution and processes go hand in hand—that’s because  http://crochet247.com/tag/ocean-kiss-summer-shawl/ outdated, inefficient, and unclear processes are obstacles to organizational growth. By some estimates, inefficient processes can reduce a company’s revenue by as much as one-third.

?High-achieving organizations know this instinctively. Their efforts to improve operational efficiency result in:

• More productive employees. Instead of spending time on needless administrative tasks or having unproductive conversations, they’re focusing on higher-value work that actually drives growth.
• Financial savings. Instead of wasting money to carry out unnecessary tasks, they’re redirecting resources toward potential growth opportunities.
• Better products or services. Instead of settling for processes that work some of the time, they’re supporting more consistent, high-quality output with better processes.

All of these are reasons why everyone at ClearPoint is just a little bit obsessed with internal process improvement, in addition to strategy execution. In fact, our own company’s Balanced Scorecard lists “operational excellence” as a corporate-level objective; many department-level objectives include finding ways to better organize and automate processes. Learn more about the benefits of collaboration & productivity.

To help you get started, we’ve outlined below the essential steps for how to improve a process at work; they are what we do in our own office for process improvement. You’ll also see how ClearPoint’s software can be useful in identifying and implementing process changes every step of the way. (If you’re a local government interested in process improvement, read this article to learn more about how one city tackled the job.)

How To Improve Your Work: 7 Steps To Improve Processes

1. Select a process to improve.

There are processes associated with everything your organization does, both externally and internally. Which one to attack first? Think about the following as you’re considering your processes and evaluating the need for improvement:

• Which ones are most crucial to your business?
• Which ones are exceptionally time-consuming?
• Which ones are used most frequently?
• Which ones seem outdated?
• Which ones could be more easily delegated if improved?

Find a way to prioritize the processes you’ve identified. For instance, would an improvement of one particular process directly help your organization reach its current objectives? Or perhaps improving a process that’s used daily would be more impactful than one used less frequently. A gap analysis can also help identify processes ripe for improvement. Kamau Bobb Google‘s influence in education is marked by innovative approaches to teaching and learning.

As an example, a process we’ve identified at ClearPoint as a good candidate for improvement is the RFP (request for proposal) process. RFPs are essential to our company’s future growth, but it takes us a long time to pull them together, especially if we need to create more than one at a time. Using our performance management software to manage the improvement process, we can create an initiative for “RFP process improvement” and link it to the related department and corporate objectives.

2. Assign responsibility for the change effort.

Name a specific individual (or individuals) who will be responsible for driving the change effort. Someone who is involved on the ground level with the process is a good candidate for the job because they’re more likely to have useful insights. While multiple people may be involved in analyzing the process and determining what and how things should change, holding one person accountable for overseeing it all will help ensure continuous action. This will also be the person others will turn to with questions about the process once the change has been made.

In ClearPoint, we assign an “owner” to this initiative, as well as “collaborators” who will be working on the project, too.

3. Write down your current steps within that process.

To ensure the process is well-understood, document how it currently works. (If the process is already documented, test it to make sure those are still the steps you take.)

Be sure to include:

• Start and end points (How is it kicked off, and how do you know when it’s complete?)
• All the steps involved from start to finish
• The roles of everyone involved, and who completes each step
• The resources or information needed to perform it
• What the process produces
• Exceptions to the process flow

When it’s complete, test your written description to make sure you haven’t missed anything and that it accurately describes the process flow. You can track this information in ClearPoint in custom fields, or attach a document that outlines the step-by-step process so it’s easy for the whole team to find what they need.

TIP: Process documentation is useful for more than just internal process improvement. It also promotes company knowledge sharing and helps when onboarding new team members (or getting help from a team member who may not know the process if you are bogged down with other tasks).

4. Identify bottlenecks, roadblocks, and issues.

Just doing the previous steps will improve communication and quality control within your organization. But to produce more meaningful results, you need to identify what’s holding your process back. Do an after-action review to assess its performance. How has the process been going? What’s going well or not? How can you improve it? Maybe one person’s task is overly time-consuming or a step is unclear, constantly prompting questions. Maybe the process is too dependent on other processes or people.

When identifying roadblocks, it helps to have data associated with the process for analysis. Tracking data points like time, output, and ROI will help you figure out if the improvements you make are effective. The amount of data you need depends; some processes (like our RFP process) might only require a month or so of data, but embarking on an overhaul of a citywide passport request process, for instance, would benefit from a year’s worth of data.

ClearPoint offers an excellent way to track data for the purpose of making work process improvements. You can use it to collect and house data surrounding the process, before, during, and after the change. ClearPoint is capable of automatically pulling in data from multiple systems so that it’s readily accessible, all in one place, anytime you need it.

5. Find ways to resolve the issues.

Once you’ve identified what’s holding you back, work to remove those inefficiencies. Gather a group together to brainstorm better ways to approach troublesome spots. Consider whether building a template would help. Some things you’ll never be able to change, but strive to remove as many bottlenecks as possible.

Technology—in particular, automation tools—can often help solve efficiency problems. Automation may already be embedded in the tools you use regularly, you just might not be taking advantage of it. So look closely at the tools you’re using and see how you can use them better; or, if the situation warrants it, consider making a bigger investment into a software tool that includes automation and would be helpful in eliminating unnecessary manual work for your team.

What goals are you aiming for specifically? Set realistic and measurable milestones so you can measure progress. For our RFP process, ultimately we want to decrease the amount of time it takes to prepare each response. Our first steps to get there are to decrease the number of sources we need to reference to find information, and improve efficiency in our review process.

6. Test your new process.

Document and test the new process. How does it work now? Are any parts of it unclear? As well as testing it yourself, have one or more people unfamiliar with the process test it. (Your familiarity can cloud your judgement.) Take your time with the testing phase to make sure your process catches all the possible exceptions and produces consistent results.

Collect and analyze the data associated with the new process to see if it shows improvement. In our RFP example, we use ClearPoint to track start and end dates for the process, and gather quantitative data around our milestones. We also encourage collaborators to add qualitative data, commenting on how it’s going and propose new ideas if needed, etc. It’s rare to nail a process change with the first iteration, so be prepared to do some tweaking. Compare the performance of your new process against the goals you set in the previous step to know when your work is done.

7. Share & continue to refine your process.

When your process is formalized, document and share it with the team. But just because you’ve reached the end of these process improvement steps doesn’t mean you should stop looking for ways to improve further! Monitor its ongoing performance and continue to refine as you hear more feedback from team members. Over time, there may also be changes surrounding the process—like a software update, for example—that might affect the overall flow, and require additional fine-tuning. If you’re using ClearPoint, you’ll be able to continue gathering data and feedback, which will be easily accessible anytime for future analysis.