EPISODE 6: How to Track Process Improvement Progress

How to Streamline Your Processes - Episode 6/8

How Do We Know if We Have Made Progress?

In This Episode (6) We will Understand How to Set up the Right Metrics to Track Your Progress

Well done in getting this far! You now have wonderfully optimised processes, if you have been following along. Today we are going to understand how we track our progress so we know if we need to make tweaks or keep going as we are.

Hi, I’m Rebecca A business operations adviser helping busy business owners win their time back.

Let's get into it.

How Do You Track Progress?

You Already (Partially) Know

In week 4 we looked at each of the hypothesis we built about our processes and the value to our businesses. When we worked out the value we identified hard numbers - revenue or time save or customers retained.

We know what is measurable AND is meaningful in terms of sustainable profit.

Define Your Metrics - An Example

Working Out What to Measure - Our Example

We have been looking at a hypothetical company and mapped out some hypothesis about how we could optimise processes. One hypothesis we had was:

IF we responded faster to emails and booked more calls THEN we would win a higher volume of jobs

We worked out this was worth ￡260k to us a year because:

We lost 2 calls a week due to responding slowly > we had an average conversation of 50% > therefore we lost an average of 1 deal a week > a deal is worth on average ￡5000

2 x 50% x ￡5000 x 52 weeks = ￡260k

These metrics alone don't drive impact

The actions we took to improve our processes were aimed at ensuring we didn't loose as many calls because slow responses. If you remember we were going to ensure that the call schedulers understood why it was important and define better what their roles were.

So to measure this impact we need to look at response times to emails (is this faster) and reasons for clients refusing a call after they have made an inquiry (is is because they had to wait too long).

Tracking the Right Things Will Ensure Progress

Either you will make progress - great. Or you can go back to the Perception > Decision > Action root causes from last week and make tweaks.

What Might Go Wrong?

1. Not Tracking What You Think You're Tracking

Tracking the wrong thing and thinking that you are tracking the right thing - make sure you pay attention to the above and ask yourself is this really tracking what I want?

2. Tracking What is Easy, Not What is Accurate

Make sure you focus on what actually needs to be measured, there are usually creative ways to get at the right thing. Tracking what is easy can lead to bad decisions.

3. Be Clear About Why You Are Tracking These Specific Metrics

Make sure that people understand why you are tracking what you are tracking AND that they understand it is the combination of A and B that matters not one in isolation.

Still to Come

2 more issues to go. We will look at documentation next week and how to get people to come along with you the week after.

What Do You Think?

I have run this series as an experiment to see what happens - what do you think? Would you do a series like this? Is it helpful as a mini course?

See you Next Thursday

Next week documentation - boring but critical!