Tilda Publishing
Leadership
How to Find Areas of Improvement in Your Business
Finding and fixing areas for improvement is crucial in today's fast-paced and competitive business world. It can make or break a company. Refining procedures, gathering feedback, and experimenting with new ideas are continual processes to keep up with evolving client wants and technology.
By visualizing workflows, creating effective feedback loops, and fostering a culture of experimentation, you can position your organization for sustainable growth and innovation.
So, let's go into more depth with a few of these methods.
By visualizing workflows, creating effective feedback loops, and fostering a culture of experimentation, you can position your organization for sustainable growth and innovation.
So, let's go into more depth with a few of these methods.
The First Way: Visualize the Work
You can’t improve what you can’t see. That’s why the first step in identifying areas of improvement is to visualize your workflows. This allows you to take control by organizing your work into clear categories and pinpointing inefficiencies.
Organize Work Into Categories
Start by sorting your business activities into the following four types of work:
To uncover inefficiencies, encourage your employees to transparently document all tasks they perform, whether planned or unplanned. This transparency will help expose hidden bottlenecks and allow you to assess how unplanned work impacts your overall operations.
Map the Workflow
Once you’ve categorized your work, the next step is process mapping. This involves documenting all the operations performed by individuals, teams, or departments. Think of it like an assembly line: What are the inputs, processes, and outputs? What tools, people, or steps are involved?
For example, modern factories often use colored lines on the floor to track the flow of production—from raw materials to finished goods. These lines make it easy to identify bottlenecks. In a business context, you can use tools like Kanban boards to track tasks visually. By observing the flow of tasks on these boards, you can spot constraints and inefficiencies in real-time.
Identify and Eliminate Constraints
Constraints, which are bottlenecks in your workflow, pose the most significant obstacles to productivity. They slow down progress and create inefficiencies. To address constraints, you have two main options:
For example, if a single person is responsible for approving all project proposals and becomes overwhelmed, you could delegate some of their tasks or streamline the approval process.
Avoid the temptation to “fix” areas outside the main bottleneck—this gives the illusion of progress without addressing the real issue. Focus your efforts where they will have the greatest impact.
Organize Work Into Categories
Start by sorting your business activities into the following four types of work:
- Business Projects: These are tasks that directly create value for your customers or give your company a competitive edge. For example, launching a new product or improving customer service processes.
- Changes: As business goals evolve and new laws, practices, or technologies emerge, changes in workflows are inevitable. These can range from updating compliance processes to adopting new tools.
- Technical Debt: Sometimes, business projects are implemented hastily, without following best practices. This can lead to inefficiencies or “quick fixes” that cause problems down the line. Addressing technical debt means restructuring these poorly executed but essential projects before they collapse under pressure.
- Unplanned Work: This includes urgent tasks or crises that disrupt planned workflows. For example, a system outage or an unexpected regulatory change. Unplanned work can overshadow everything else if left unchecked.
To uncover inefficiencies, encourage your employees to transparently document all tasks they perform, whether planned or unplanned. This transparency will help expose hidden bottlenecks and allow you to assess how unplanned work impacts your overall operations.
Map the Workflow
Once you’ve categorized your work, the next step is process mapping. This involves documenting all the operations performed by individuals, teams, or departments. Think of it like an assembly line: What are the inputs, processes, and outputs? What tools, people, or steps are involved?
For example, modern factories often use colored lines on the floor to track the flow of production—from raw materials to finished goods. These lines make it easy to identify bottlenecks. In a business context, you can use tools like Kanban boards to track tasks visually. By observing the flow of tasks on these boards, you can spot constraints and inefficiencies in real-time.
Identify and Eliminate Constraints
Constraints, which are bottlenecks in your workflow, pose the most significant obstacles to productivity. They slow down progress and create inefficiencies. To address constraints, you have two main options:
- Reduce the Load: Limit the number of new tasks entering the system to give your team space to focus on the bottleneck.
- Expand Capacity: Add more resources (people, tools, or time) to address the constraint directly.
For example, if a single person is responsible for approving all project proposals and becomes overwhelmed, you could delegate some of their tasks or streamline the approval process.
Avoid the temptation to “fix” areas outside the main bottleneck—this gives the illusion of progress without addressing the real issue. Focus your efforts where they will have the greatest impact.
The Second Way: Build Feedback Loops
Feedback is the foundation of improvement. Without it, you’re flying blind. The second step to identifying areas of improvement is to implement feedback loops that allow you to assess performance and make changes quickly.
Gather Feedback From All Stakeholders
To effectively improve your workflows, you need input from everyone involved—customers, employees, and other stakeholders. Here’s why:
In my experience, customer support teams are particularly valuable in this process. By keeping them informed of upcoming changes to your systems, you can empower them to track patterns or anomalies in customer complaints. Their observations can reveal recurring issues or opportunities for improvement.
Act on Feedback Quickly
Speed matters. The sooner you act on feedback, the faster you can make improvements. For example, if you discover through support tickets that customers are confused by a new feature, you can update your user interface or provide additional training materials before the issue escalates.
Quick feedback loops also prevent you from wasting time and resources on tasks that don’t meet stakeholder needs. This makes your operations leaner and more effective.
Gather Feedback From All Stakeholders
To effectively improve your workflows, you need input from everyone involved—customers, employees, and other stakeholders. Here’s why:
- Customer Feedback: Your customers are your ultimate judges. Use surveys, user reviews, and analytics to understand how they experience your product or service. For example, if customers frequently complain about a complicated checkout process, this is an area that needs improvement.
- Employee Feedback: Employees on the front lines often have the clearest view of inefficiencies. Regularly conduct team retrospectives or one-on-one meetings to gather their insights.
In my experience, customer support teams are particularly valuable in this process. By keeping them informed of upcoming changes to your systems, you can empower them to track patterns or anomalies in customer complaints. Their observations can reveal recurring issues or opportunities for improvement.
Act on Feedback Quickly
Speed matters. The sooner you act on feedback, the faster you can make improvements. For example, if you discover through support tickets that customers are confused by a new feature, you can update your user interface or provide additional training materials before the issue escalates.
Quick feedback loops also prevent you from wasting time and resources on tasks that don’t meet stakeholder needs. This makes your operations leaner and more effective.
The Third Way: Embrace Experimentation
In today’s globalized and fast-changing market, experimentation is not optional—it’s essential. The third step in improving your business is to foster a culture of trial and error, where employees and teams are encouraged to test new ideas and learn from failures.
Experimentation Drives Growth
Take inspiration from Thomas Edison, who famously said, “Every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward.” Each experiment—whether it succeeds or fails—provides valuable insights that can lead to breakthroughs.
For example, Netflix’s rise as a global entertainment leader is built on constant experimentation. From refining its recommendation algorithm to producing original content, Netflix consistently tries new approaches to attract audiences and improve its offerings.
Build a Culture of Innovation
Creating a culture of experimentation is easier said than done. Many businesses find it challenging to create a culture of experimentation due to employees' fear of failure or criticism. To overcome this:
Embracing experimentation in your organization increases the likelihood of discovering innovative ways to serve customers, enhance efficiency, and outperform competitors.
Experimentation Drives Growth
Take inspiration from Thomas Edison, who famously said, “Every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward.” Each experiment—whether it succeeds or fails—provides valuable insights that can lead to breakthroughs.
For example, Netflix’s rise as a global entertainment leader is built on constant experimentation. From refining its recommendation algorithm to producing original content, Netflix consistently tries new approaches to attract audiences and improve its offerings.
Build a Culture of Innovation
Creating a culture of experimentation is easier said than done. Many businesses find it challenging to create a culture of experimentation due to employees' fear of failure or criticism. To overcome this:
- Celebrate Initiative: Recognize employees for their willingness to try new ideas, even if they don’t always succeed.
- Focus on Learning: Shift the narrative around failure from “what went wrong” to “what did we learn?” This encourages people to take risks without fear of blame.
Embracing experimentation in your organization increases the likelihood of discovering innovative ways to serve customers, enhance efficiency, and outperform competitors.
Conclusion
Here is what I think you should do to stay ahead of the race in this ever-changing world.
Starting with the easiest steps and making them more difficult as you get closer to your goal:
Starting with the easiest steps and making them more difficult as you get closer to your goal:
- Visualize workflows to identify inefficiencies, categorize tasks, and address constraints that slow progress.
- Create fast and effective feedback loops to gather insights from stakeholders, act quickly on improvements, and prevent wasted effort.
- Foster a culture of experimentation to encourage innovation, learn from failures, and stay competitive in a rapidly changing market.