Are your company's processes truly understood the same way by all your team members?
Reflect on the 4 Current States for EACH of your processes.
1) What you think your team is doing
(This could be based on your experience supporting the process a year ago, what you hope is happening and or what you would expect to be happening)
2) What your documentation says should be happening
(Ex. Standard Operating Procedures)
3) What one team member, as subject matter expert, tells you is happening (This is based on their individual experience and assuming everyone else does it the same way)
4) What is actually happening
(There may actually be a common standard followed where everyone is doing the same steps, in the same order, and in the same way. Oftentimes there is unknown variation)
Why should you care what is actually happening?
1) Standards drive efficiency which manages costs and ensures great customer experiences
2) Non-standardized processes are hard to measure and improve as there is no consistent baseline
3) You can't easily automate non-standardized processes
4) If you have internal and or external audits leading up to either a round of funding or if you are publically traded and have regular audits ... there will likely be "findings" that will have to remedied if there are inconsistencies between what you think is happening and what actually is
Start taking an inventory of your processes and taking time to "step" through them with your teams to see what opportunities exist.
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