Process!

by Mike Paton

3.Her time will be better spent elsewhere. It’s likely your top performer loves what she does, is results driven, and wants to spend time acquiring new customers and growing relationships. Truth be told, it’s in your company’s best interests to keep her focused on that, too. By all means, leverage her expertise. Observe what she does and how she does it. Ask questions. Invite her to suggest ways to improve or streamline some of the steps—just don’t pass the whole baton and expect her to run with it across the finish line.

You’re almost certain to encounter resistance on your journey, so patience, determination, and real belief in the power of this work is critical every step of the way. Be willing to listen, learn, and lead in a way that builds your company’s culture of discipline.

Every team needs a strong leader, and for this effort, that person needs to be passionate about process and skilled at keeping your team focused and accountable. For many organizations that describes the team’s obvious leader—perhaps it’s the business owner, CEO, president, or general manager. In a company running on EOS, it’s often the Integrator, though on occasion it’s a Visionary who’s passionate about process.

If the team’s obvious leader isn’t the right driver of this project, find a leadership team member who does know and care about process. It may be the head of operations or finance, your finance leader, or even a process-oriented sales leader. You need someone knowledgeable an...

Now you have a skilled, energized team that owns it. You’re all fully committed to the journey ahead. The path forward is simple and straightforward—though not always easy. It involves two EOS Tools (the 3-Step Process Documenter and the FBA Checklist) as well as a bonus tool, Getting What You Want. These three tools and the tips we s...

What we’re about to share with you may seem obvious or trivial. These are three very basic steps, but that doesn’t mean they’re ineffective. In fact, we believe their simplicity is what makes them work so consistently well in entrepreneurial companies. Many process improvement initiatives fail precisely because leaders fail to own, complete, or master the basics. They skip these simple steps altogether, or half-heartedly go through the motions rather than engaging fully in the work.

You cannot get the most important things in your business done consistently well if your leadership team is not 100 percent clear and on the same page. The 3-Step Process Documenter helps you agree on what those things are—your “handful of core processes.” Then it helps you agree on the major steps within each process and explain the who/what/when/where/how of each step. Finally, it helps you figure out how best to package these core processes so they are easy to find and use.

When every leader in the company is aligned and eager to get these processes “followed by all,” you’ll change behavior mo...

imagined was possible. Without that alignment and belief, you’ll fail to overcome the mountain of resistance to even minor changes in “the way we’ve always done things” that exists in every orga...

To some readers, this may seem like a five-minute exercise. Trust us: we’ve heard many a leadership team claim they “already know” what their core processes are. So, when we tell them the exercise actually takes about an hour, they are skeptical. Then we remind the team that we need to identify and agree on a handful of core processes. Those two words—handful and agree—take the most time. When leadership teams do this exercise on their own (which happens most of the time), they come to understand. On the rare occasion that we’re asked to facilitate for them, the exercise takes . . . about an hour. Here’s how it works:

We start by reminding everyone on the team that we’re taking a 20/80 approach. Your people do a million different things every day, and we’re not going to document and simplify all of it. We will focus our attention on a handful of core processes—five to twelve important things that you do repeatedly—which make your organization unique and valuable. What do you do that makes your organization a great place to work? What processes deliver terrific value to your customers? How do you hit deadlines, meet expectations, beat the competition,

and make money? In other words, what are the ingredients in your business’ secret sauce?

We then share with the team a sample list, saying, “A lot of companies have a list that includes an HR or people process, a marketing process, a sales process, and an account-management or customer-service process.” Most companies have between two and five operations processes for how you build the product, deliver the service, manage your supply chain, and so on. M...

This exercise is designed only to jump-start the team’s thinking. It’s not meant to be your list. We really just want each leader to think about what truly makes the organization consistently unique and valuable from their own perspective. With that context clear, ask each leader to take five quiet minutes to think and record their own list. “What would make your list of core processes?”

When we ask our team to spend “five quiet minutes,” we sincerely mean “five” and “quiet.” Letting the team think and work independently, without distraction, is important. People process differently, and many people need quiet time to gather their thoughts. This isn’t the time to exchange ideas or process out loud yet. We’ll collaborate shortly. Right now, we want to maximize the contribution of each team member and capture a broad range of perspectives.

After pens have stopped moving, compile the list on your whiteboard, flip chart, or drawing tool. Record the team’s thoughts right next to the sample list you recorded earlier—where everyone can see it. It’s extremely helpful for the team to see everyone’s ideas laid out in a column, beca...

1.Starting with the first item on the list, ask, “Is this one of our core processes?” 2.Facilitate the team to a decision—Yes or No •If Yes: ∘Ask, “What should we call it (e.g., the HR process, the people process, etc.)?” ∘Reach agreement. Make any change on the board. •If No: ∘Ask, “Is this a major step in some other core process?” ∘If No, cross out the item. ∘If Yes: -Help the team decide which other process it belongs to or is a step in. For example, you may decide that “invoicing” is a step in...