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A better approach is often to create a spreadsheet per department.  This allows you then to manage permissions on each spreadsheet appropriately.

 

There is no reason why members of one department can’t have access to another department's spreadsheet if they need to see progress or if they play a role in those processes.

 

Ask the process owner(s) to present their experiences.

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Whether the three processes were all owned by one person or more doesn’t really matter. It is also highly likely that others in the team had some involvement, where a step crossed between departments for example.

What you are asking the process owner to do

• Show the before and after of their process over the past three weeks

• Discuss how the process was refined, if at all, and if they felt that was valuable

• Any challenges they had in working this way

• Articulate whether this approach can be extended, and if anything needs to happen to better support implementation

 

You will now revert back to the initial shortlist of focus areas from the ‘Identify’ session, and ask all process owners to take the same approach - leaning on the learnings from the first three processes.

 

This meeting is recommended to be a consistent monthly event, where owners discuss the improvements they have made and the challenges they may still need to overcome.

 

You should add an agenda point to discuss new or future process challenges - perhaps because there is an impending product launch, new territory you intend to market to or a team needs to hire.

 

What is important is that you are starting the journey of embedding process in your business, in a collaborative way that is gathering the feedback of those who are most closely involved in the process - so that things can improve, continuously.

 

Obviously this is now getting more complex and it is at this point at which you may want to consider using some checklist software such as beSlick to manage this. That is basically how beSlick was born.  I initially did use spreadsheets but found I needed to develop beSlick to give me the extra permissions, reporting, audit trail, to-do-list, feedback, rich documentation, integration with other systems and a wealth of other features that I needed.  I’ll cover this more later.

 

What not to do

• Allow technical difficulties to halt the project

  • There are better ways of managing this exercise than a spreadsheet - but it is often the easiest way to get started. If technical difficulty is holding you back, now is the time to investigate options to make that easier (see next module).

• Allow members of the management team to abstain from the project

  • Often the most critical processes in your business span multiple departments, and for that reason you need complete buy-in for this to be a success.

• Allow the initial pain of change to derail the project

  • It is actually a culture of change that is the goal of the project. A business that stagnates is one that does not grow. Without change nothing will be achieved. It is important that your team recognise this and embrace it.

 

What is the expected outcome?

• That you have feedback on what might need to be improved.

• That all members of the management team now have clear actions on what to do before your next monthly meeting.

 

What should owners of the relevant areas do next?

Read back to Module 4; Capture.

 

Additional materials:

• Example meeting agenda

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