Think about your favourite brands, it doesn’t matter if they’re a fast-food retailer, technology company or service business. Why do you like them? I’m sure one of the main reasons is that they provide you with a quality product or service which regularly meets or exceeds your expectations.
The ability to consistently deliver quality doesn’t happen by chance, it’s a direct result of having well-defined processes which tell people exactly what they need to do and when then need to do it. How well maintained and respected those processes are determines your experience as a customer.
If you’ve experienced a problem with your favourite brand it’s more than likely that it was a result of a process not being followed, or an exceptional instance for which a process did not already exist. I have personally seen substantial additional work generated by people who didn’t follow a clearly defined process and the impact that had on the customer, it never turns out well!
So if we want to become the best at what we do, we need to have clearly defined processes which can adapt over time and develop a process-driven culture within our businesses.
The cultural part is more a question of education so that people know why processes are valuable and keep up-to-date with changes. One of my biggest pet hates is performing a process only to find out halfway through that it was out of date. I once read that Apple employees have to answer a weekly quiz on policy update to prove that they’ve read and understood any changes. It’s probably not a surprise then that Apple products are very high quality and regularly meet the expectations of their customers.
The moral of the story is; if you want to be the best at what you do and deliver a high-quality product or service you must invest time and effort into your processes.
Nexus Continuous Improvement helps businesses map and analyse existing processes for efficiency. If you want help discovering your existing processes please contact us for a free consultation.
