When a business wants to work more efficiently, the usual response is an improvement programme. A team is set up, processes are mapped across the organisation, a long list of initiatives is produced and a timeline is agreed. Six months later, the list is still long, and the people doing the work have noticed very little difference.
There is a faster way, and it is the way most founders improve their companies: pick one process that clearly does not work, fix it properly, and move on to the next one. Small, visible improvements build momentum, and momentum is what large programmes usually lack.
Pick the right process
Not every process is worth fixing first. Look for one that meets three conditions.
- It annoys people. Ask the people who do the work what wastes their time. The answers are usually immediate and specific: the approval that takes a week, the report nobody reads, the handover where information gets lost.
- It happens often. A small saving on something that happens fifty times a week is worth more than a big saving on something that happens twice a year.
- It can be fixed by the people in the room. Choose a process you can change without a new IT system or a decision from the top. Those can come later.
A good example is the way new customers are set up. In many businesses it involves several teams, the same information typed into several systems and a lot of waiting. It is visible to customers, it happens often and much of it can be improved without new technology.
Watch the work, not the flowchart
Process maps on a whiteboard show how work is supposed to happen. To fix a process, you need to see how it actually happens.
Spend a few hours with the people who do the work. Follow one real case from start to finish. Note every handover, every wait, every time information is re-entered and every time someone has to chase someone else. You will usually find that most of the time is spent waiting, not working.
Ask the people involved one simple question at each step: does this step help the customer or the business, or is it there because it has always been there? The answers are often surprisingly clear.
Change it with the people who use it
The people who do the work usually know what should change. They have rarely been asked, or they have been asked and then nothing happened. Sit down with them and agree on a better way of working. Keep it practical:
- Remove the steps that add nothing.
- Combine handovers where one person can do the job.
- Make sure information is entered once and shared.
- Agree on who owns the process from now on.
Then try the new way in real life, starting the same week. Do not wait for perfect documentation or a formal launch.
Measure before and after
Pick one or two simple measures that matter, such as how long the process takes from start to finish, or how many cases need to be reworked. Measure them before the change and again a few weeks after. The numbers do not need to be precise. They need to show whether the change worked.
If it worked, tell people. A short message that says what was changed, who did it and what difference it made does more for the next improvement than any programme plan. If it did not work, adjust and try again.
Then do the next one
The value of this approach comes from repetition. One fixed process is a small win. Ten fixed processes over a few months change how the organisation works, and, just as importantly, how people think about improvement. They stop waiting for a programme and start fixing things themselves.
That is the real goal. Improvement should not be a project that happens to the organisation. It should be a habit of the people in it.