Make a 2-person team feel like 20 strong
Team sizes have shrunk- not everywhere or in every industry, but managers are often faced with the new reality of having far fewer team members to drive the business. This is particularly challenging in a time when you’re giving 110% just to stay afloat. Likewise, employees often feel additional pressure with regards to both potential further downsizing, and the volume of work which needs to be completed with a decreased team size. To ensure business continuity and maintain a strong sense of corporate culture, leaders need to learn how to make the best use of their limited resources- both human and otherwise. By the end of this article, you will be equipped with the necessary tools to understand how you can optimise your business structure and gain clarity with regards to business output. A limited team can be a new lean model working in your advantage with the right powerful processes in place.
Understand the skills, competency, and experience levels within your team
Invest time and effort into understanding the skills within your existing team. As a manager, life would be infinitely easier if you allowed the natural expertise and skills of your team to develop as opposed to imposing your personal desires. Gather insights about the strengths and weaknesses of your team. If you wanted a more structured approach, teams could work together to all conduct personal SWOT analyses. As a less structured approach, managers can ask for inputs casually about what employees really enjoy doing and their least favourite work. This often maps onto strengths and weaknesses. Rather than waiting for performance reviews, have honest and direct conversations with employees in environments which make them feel heard and supported- make sure that employees understand that their weaknesses won’t be used against them or their performance. Observe how they interact within their teams- listen and observe to learn more about team dynamics. Consider this as an opportunity to take full stock of all the brilliant skills you have in your arsenal. Catalogue your resources and take time to learn about your people.
Map out your ‘as is’ process
To understand the current achievements and objectives of your business with clarity and transparency, map out your processes. As you learn to work with your new leaner team, map out your processes as they are today. Understanding your current processes, the sequence of activities you take to create value, will help you realise what work is being managed by your team. Likewise, mapping out your processes will highlight critical stages within the business journey and illustrate where interaction between functions is necessary.
Understand where you are now to set realistic goals and plans
Although the temptation to jump ahead to mapping out your processes as you would like them to be is great, make sure you resist making this leap. It is only by understanding the processes as they currently are in your business that allows you to chart our resource allocation and plan the journey from where you are to where your business would like to be in the future. Have a look at why business processes are crucial to your business by clicking here!
Refine your processes
Having mapped your current processes, you have likely already identified where you would make improvements or changes. Take the time to go through your processes in more depth. Remember to keep in mind the purpose of the process and the start and end. There are many issues you may look out for, including:
- Have steps been duplicated?
- Does this achieve the core purpose of the process?
- Can repetitive tasks or tasks with heavy paper load be automated?
- Do I have enough people to carry out this process as it is currently?
- What are the productivity levels I expect from this process?
- Can I eliminate any unnecessary steps which are not serving this process?
- Am I making use of cross-functional strategies?
Once processes have been refined and confirmed, you can start to set KPI and then understand the possibility of digitalisation and automation.
Understand current productivity levels
Once your processes are defined and refined, ensure that you set clear KPIs which realistically reflect your team and their capability. By using the process mapping to identify the scope of work and the resources to carry out this work, KPIs should be realistically aligned with these figures. Following such a process allows for the maintenance of high productivity levels without compromising on quality. Likewise, your employees are more likely to feel supported and listened to due to their involvement in the process mapping exercise.
Aligning KPIs in partnership with employees
Set realistic KPIs and measurables in partnership with your team- this shouldn’t feel like an authoritative decree. Rather, employees should feel a sense of clarity and trust in the certainty this exercise provides. Choose a methodology which works for your business- we prefer the Balanced Scorecard- to ensure KPIs align with your strategy. By identifying productivity levels once processes are optimised, you can also create a solid understanding of what will be needed to scale successfully or potentially automate processes.
Identify if technology or automation can be used to support employees
IT is an enabler of efficient business processes. However, before you rush off to invest in building your digital arsenal, your core high-level processes must be understood. This will allow you to make informed business decisions about the appropriate level of digital investment.
Follow this link to watch our short video on how IT and processes work together- https://bit.ly/34hjvfV
Automate the process
Once the processes have been finalised, it is then easy to identify possible areas to automate the process, this can be in a phased approach as business grows and enables scalability.
In many instances the process remains the same and IT becomes an enabler which helps the process to:
- become quicker,
- be more efficient,
- improve accuracy,
- drive profitability into the business,
- improve customer satisfaction.
Reviewing the KPI’s and looking at the process will enable you to identify tasks that can be automated and how they best fit into the overall business.
There is always a cost to automation but with a clear understanding of the benefits from a productivity and service perspective, it will become clear when the best time is to make the investment and the commercial benefits that will be realised.
This can be charted by setting milestones which indicate a need to automate. For instance, if the number of documents to be processed moves from 1 a month to 1000 a month, automation can be implemented. This will ensure that the employee can maintain productivity across the board. Likewise, the ‘when’ column can serve as a target date for this automation.
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Limited = Lean?
Limited resources often force resourcefulness, innovation, and creativity. What is crucial in supporting this is creating clarity and transparency for your team. This will help to make sure that your corporate culture is not taken over by fear or anxiety.
Having a decreased team size means that it is easier to communicate directly with your teams. Failing to take advantage of the opportunities a downsize offers is a wasted learning moment.
If you would like any additional support in understanding how processes can be mapped and refined, contact us via action@identifyaction.com
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