How a Process Improvement mindset helps you, your team, and your SOPs (with Examples)

Once you understand what a process is, maybe you've started to document your first process, create your first SOPs, create your first routines. You have started to let process drive your business and now you're wondering about that sneaky topic of process improvement. You can also hear this being called things like continuous improvement, process iteration, efficiency, optimization. Insert a bunch of business jargon here, but basically continuous improvement or process improvement is really the idea of taking whatever your process is and making it a little bit better each time. There are a lot of different approaches to how to make a process better, a lot of different tools for analysis that you can use to look at what you're doing and make it a bit better, but without getting into any of the geeky details. There are really two camps of process improvement. There's the pause and look at everything, and there's the let's just fix a few things as we go. This is obviously not the technical terms for these two categories, but I feel like this is an easy way to understand it and to start to apply this mindset to our own businesses. When it comes to the let's stop everything and review our business approach, that is a topic for a whole other video. Yes, that is process improvement, but that's usually a very involved process with a bunch of different methodologies you can throw at the wall. For today. When we're talking about process improvement, especially for someone who's new or just getting started in the world of process, we're talking about the other camp of, you know, let's just make things a little bit better as we go. That is the process improvement mindset that I want you to walk away with at the end of this video. This is the same mindset I want your team, if applicable, to have in their head or when they look at your processes or SOPs or equipment. But still, let's improve things as we go. Okay? What does that actually look like? Well, for the remainder of this video, I want to give you an example of what this kind of approach, this kind of mindset would look like in a real small business. By telling you a story about my real small business, I'm going to tell you a quick scenario and then I'm going to go over three possible ways to respond to that scenario based on your mindset around process improvement. By the end of this video, I hope you'll have a concrete example of what process improvement can look like. If we take it as this little by little approach, which for many businesses is what I would recommend. Ultimately, by the end of this video, we're going to answer the question, what does it mean to improve a process? But first, let me tell you a story of the scenario that we're going to be solving and working through today. The scenario is quite simple. We have a process inside our business at ProcessDriven to send a weekly newsletter. This is what it looks like. This process has gone through a lot of hands over the years. It was first mine, then a va's, then so and so. You know, it kept going through the rounds. And each time someone would change something about the sop. This process is kind of the stage or the scene that we're going to be working in today. Because one day this process was delegated, yet another time it reached a fourth person, which or fifth person in the line of delegation, and the new person who was in charge of this process, who had never worked at ProcessDriven before, they picked up this process and they felt, all right, I'm going to do this. I've got it. I know exactly what I need to do. This SOP has been here. It's very clear. Let's go. But there was a problem. There were certain steps in the process where we used terms or made assumptions that that new person didn't understand. They didn't know what we meant by campaign or what we meant by that great template or whatever else it was in the process. This is totally normal. Especially when a process has mostly been delegated between people who have that context. You might not catch it or realize what the jargon is. So this new person, faced with this process, with some ambiguity, had three possible paths forward, one of which is the process improvement path, if I can make that alliteration. And the others are, well, what a normal employee would do. All right, so let's talk about the first option of what this person had to recover. So if this person believed the process is gospel, yet the process wasn't clear to them, what could they do? Well, most likely they'd follow the process step by step, and wherever it was confusing, they'd assume they're the problem because the process is perfect in theory. So they have to be the issue. So they're going to make an assumption, they're going to guess about that confusing step, make a judgment call, do something, and then they're going to hope that was the right guess. The next time this process is delegated to somebody else, someone else would do the same thing. They'd be confused by maybe something else. They'd make assumptions, and then these layers and layers of assumptions would stack on top of each Other until we don't even recognize the process. Now why would we do this as an employee? Well, if the process is gospel, we are in the right if we blindly follow it because the process is the gospel. That is the only path forward. If there is a mistake, it's the boss's fault for not having the SOP exactly specify these details. That would be one path forward. And that is not what I would consider a process improvement mindset. If you haven't gathered by now, we're kind of getting back into the definition by figuring out what it's not. All right? Now that is one way of solving this issue of approaching a process that's confusing and finding your way forward. And it is in that mindset of process is gospel. We will just do exactly what the process says. The second approach that someone could have when it comes to a process that's confusing is what I'm just going to call the people are everything approach. This is the most common one that I see used in teams where there is no process with the people are everything mindset, which is again, not the same as process improvement with the people are everything piece. This is all about personalities and skill and talent. Okay? A little bit of competitive nature in it. So if I go to that process and I see this isn't clear.

Huh? Okay, well, the last person that did this must have been an idiot. That's it. They're terrible. They're terrible co workers. They shouldn't work here anymore. I'm glad I got this over so I can fix it because I am the best.

Obviously, that's what that person would be saying. They look at the process and they see the confusing areas and again, that reflects poorly on the last person. But they're the person that's going to fix it. So what do they do? Well, they might change the process and write some notes, but most likely they wouldn't. They commit things to their own memory. They'd make a decision or get information to make the process do what they need it to do. They would do things in the way that they want to do them and they would see as long as they achieved the result and there were no mistakes, that they're an all star. If there was a mistake, well, they'd blame the last person who wrote the SOP and say, hey, they did a crappy job. They didn't train me right, so that's why something went wrong. Either way, there's a person to blame or a person to congratulate if something happens with this process. The problem with this when we have people are everything and people being the center of our business, well, people leave, people move around. And if this person is kind of in that competitive mindset of everything comes down to people, well, wouldn't I want to look like a rock star and keep this SOP nice and vague? So I'm needed, so I'm necessary, so I'm the only one that really knows how to do the process. Maybe there's that temptation there, especially if we are going to be judged personally by the results of, of a process. Here my incentives are not to help the collective, it is to help myself and generally just be viewed as awesome and a rock star and invaluable. And that is really in conflict with this process driven approach we're trying to get to now. We've talked about two different mindsets when it comes to seeing a process that's not quite perfect. In one case we just kind of blindly followed it. In another case we kind of ignored it just to make ourselves look better or worse. Neither of these are what we want for process improvement. And if you know that by now, and if you found this helpful so far, here's a little reminder to like and subscribe and improve your process of watching this video by improving the visibility of this video so other people see it. So your like and subscribe help show this video to other people. Thank you. Now moving on to the third way forward. Okay, the third mindset, which is the opinion. And that process is iterative. If we view process as this kind of collective resource, something that's constantly changing and evolving and needs to change and evolve as we find things that could be done better, what would happen is when we see this SOP that has ambiguities, myself as the new owner of this process, I would view that as an opportunity to leave my mark, right? To make the business a little bit better than I found it. And I would leave a comment because in these instances, usually you're able to actually edit your process. And I would leave a comment and.

Say, hey, person who lasted this, this doesn't make sense. Do you mean this or do you mean this?

And I would try to solicit that information from my colleague if possible, to fill in the gaps. And if that's not possible, if asking for help isn't possible because that person left or isn't employed anymore or got hit by a bus, who knows if that's not possible, What I would do is document my assumptions. So I would take that process and where the uncertainty was like what email do we Send to, I'll clarify it and maybe put a little asterisk saying hey, I'm assuming this is correct, I'll let you know if it's not and start to modify the process to at least document what assumptions I'm making and why. The beauty of this approach is if there is a mistake in the process, we know why. Because the assumptions are documented, the things that we think are written down. And if there is a mistake, we also don't blame the individual because we view this as a team effort. The process is a collective entity. It's a contribution of many, many people who work together over years in many businesses to make a process really hum. And so if the SOP is followed and the result isn't getting what we expect, it's not anyone's fault, really, it's everybody's collective fault and it's our responsibility to prevent it in the future and not freak out over whatever caused the mistake in the first place. The last and perhaps most important detail about this kind of mindset of viewing process as a continuous process is that the next time we delegate this process and it goes from person four to person five, well, person five will benefit from the assumptions that were documented by the person before because they won't have to make those same assumptions. Rather than saying send test email, by the time it reaches person 5, it'll say send test email to this email address and we'll have those additional details that have accumulated from all the people before them. So all that to say what does it mean to have a continuous improvement mindset? Well, it's to view every process as something that's up and coming. It's like a snowball of contributions from your team, from your tools, from your technology, from your equipment, from your lessons learned the hard way, and turning all of that, plus some sirens outside into lessons that help your future self. But hopefully this helps you get a real world example of what process improvement looks like, especially when it's done little by little along the way, even does not and should not be what is happening outside. Hopefully this helps you understand that process is something that is little by little. The best improvements to a process are often quite small and they're little steps you can do, little details you can clarify that have a ripple effect downstream. That other approach I talked about at the beginning of, you know, sitting down and thinking and really analyzing everything that is so, so important. But we don't need to start at that scale. In fact, most of us are not going to ever work at that scale. Instead, if we just focus in on the details and make those tiny little tweaks. You will be amazed at what the effect is in the big picture. That's one of the reasons why we talk about process on this channel as a bottom up effort instead of a top down. Now at this rate, given the traffic outside and all that noise, I'm sorry about it. I think we're going to stop this video here and I just want to say thank you so much for taking the time to watch this and if you have any questions or would like to learn more, please leave me a comment below. And while you're down there, click subscribe. And if you'd like to get tips and insights like this inside your inbox, I do want to invite you to check out the description below. We have a link to our newsletter. We're going to wrap up some headlines and newest videos and send them out each week to our email list. So feel free to check that out down there. Otherwise, thanks so much for watching and until next time, enjoy the process and the traffic noise.