All businesses want to drive down their costs and boost their revenue. But how? Today, we’re sharing our process excellence insights with you so you can generate these stellar results for yourself.
Step 1: Dive into data-collecting: Start simple and stick to the basics
In order to set your company up for success, start simple (and keep it that way) by narrowing down and focusing on three main areas that drive your bottom line.
Try to pinpoint your three largest financial drivers and start collecting data on each one. For example:
- If you’re a service creation company, track hours per project or hours per client
- If you are an emergency room, you may be interested in average wait time per patient
Once you start collecting data, you can begin to see and understand how your financial drivers are behaving. Plot the data over time and look for any trends. Establish daily, weekly, and/or monthly targets that you are trying to achieve. Prioritize your solutions based on how important they are to your financial drivers.
Step 2: Share your three largest financial drivers and the data you’ve charted
Share your three key financial drivers and the relevant data you’ve collected with your associates on a regular basis (keep reading to find out what exactly “regular” means).
As your associates find out how successful they were or how much they need to improve on a regular basis, they will develop a personal interest in how the data is behaving day after day. After all, it’s a direct reflection of their efforts!
This will help to breed a culture of process excellence and data-driven action across all levels of the organization.
Step 3: Have a daily meeting (whether you want to or not)
Many companies have a daily meeting. In the manufacturing world, it’s called a “daily production meeting.” In many workplace cultures, it’s considered sacred to the management team — the heartbeat of the daily requirements.
Use this meeting to enable data-driven conversations and action. Employees are expected to be brutally honest, look critically at new data and their own performance, and consider at all times the three key financial drivers.
Over time, your associates will naturally begin to focus on the three key financial drivers themselves. Make sure to celebrate those wins when they start coming!
The key to process excellence: data and communication
Once you gather your data and gather your team daily to discuss the possibilities, you’re off to the races. Data-driven conversations lead to prioritized action and focus (which leads to more money saved and earned for your business).
The act of continuous process and business performance improvement is the foundational block of process excellence.
What questions do you still have about developing a culture of process excellence? Leave us a comment below, or contact our team of cross-functional performance improvement specialists today to learn more.