Your team may be spending too much time and effort on wasteful processes and tasks in your office that do not support the daily mission and overall strategy. As the leader, I advise you to continually review and decide tasks to be eliminated. Wasteful processes use up limited time and resources that produce no margin for your business. This is especially true for legacy businesses with processes that have been handed down for many years.
Team members often grind through the day performing tasks that should be easily automated. Accountants and analysts often face this dilemma, which I can attest to due to many years in finance. Old finance models that are no longer relevant and include many manual steps probably plague your business contributing to an increased chance for errors. These errors lead to wrong financial projections and bad decisions.
Additionally, a few team members arrive to work every day with the intent of moving items from their inbox to their outbox. Good people, but they lack the strategic understanding of the value of their time. Challenge this way of doing business.
Outdated processes will tie up your limited resources and put you at greater risk. Your team may not even realize that what they are doing is reducing value within your business. You can always find more time within your team’s tasks by cutting and streamlining steps.
Tips for gaining valuable time and resources by eliminating wasteful processes:
- Stop sending reports no one uses. Your team may be creating reports that are no longer useful or are ignored by everyone. Have every team member list out every report, email update or other type of routine information processing to determine if the requirement is still valid. I had a friend who led a team and decided to stop every report that he believed was not relevant. No one missed them nor realized they were not being sent. Save your resources by reviewing your team’s daily rhythm.
- Prioritize tasks, meetings, and issues. Prioritize what you do every day around revenue generation and cost reduction ideas always keeping in mind your strategy end-state, company values, and mission statement.
- Conduct efficient and few meetings. Make meetings the shortest you can. Have a formal agenda that is published in advance. End the meeting with a back brief and adjourn when you have finished the agenda. Control the tempo and the discussion. Unless you want a lengthy debate, keep the opinions to a minimum. Small team, impromptu collaboration discussions offer a better solution than traditional meetings.
- Document your processes. List out all steps within the critical tasks and processes so that you can find efficiencies, eliminate anything not useful and have a documented, step-by-step guide for continuity purposes.
I challenge you to review your team’s daily work routine for wasteful processes. Some of the tasks have been handed down and around the office without regard for what value is added. By saving time, you and your team can focus on more revenue generation and cost reduction to gain more margin for your business.
“Management is efficiency in climbing the ladder of success; leadership determines whether the ladder is leaning against the right wall.” –Stephen Covey
What wasteful processes can you eliminate to gain back more productivity and margin in your business?
Please comment or email me at comment@stephenmclain.com.
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Copyright 2017 – Stephen McLain