Dealing with COVID Chaos - Processes

Hey, it's Kevin Brown. Hope you're doing great. So here we are in month two of this craziness. It was really just at the beginning of kind of the new uncharted waters that we entered in with the COVID virus, challenges that we're having around the world, that I first sent out an email to our clients, to our colleagues and friends who are on our lists and so forth. We started talking about, you know, what is it? What's important right now where everybody's working, working from home. We've got, you know, teams that are used to coming into the office every day, maybe a handful of our sales team or some other support teams that might work remotely. But in general, you know, we have people who have never worked from home before now working there. So we started this conversation about, you know, how do we turn this time right now where we're struggling, you know, businesses, there's a downturn, obviously, we've got the health epidemic that's going on. People are losing their jobs. But how do we take the businesses that we have and really take a little bit of a mindset shift? You know, it's so easy to go down that path so fast of what's going bad and what's going wrong. And I started using the phrase very quickly about. About this whole scenario that we're in is how do we. How do we turn what people are sometimes looking at as spring break, and now it might even be summer break, into a spring board to make our businesses better? So we started off in a series of emails and newsletters and videos that we did, and we wanted to talk about a series of topics. So, you know, so far we've done a series on expectations, on communications, and today we want to talk a little bit about processes. You know, if you have good processes within your business, having remote workers is just so much easier. We don't know what the future holds. We don't know if we may be stuck with some more or maybe all remote workers or some of our teams that weren't previously remote workers might be now. We don't know what the future looks like. We also know that there's a reasonable expectation that we could have another epidemic or pandemic that we face again down the road. So the things that we do today are going to make our businesses better for the future. So I wanted to talk about a few things regarding processes. Now you might say, well, Kevin, what do you mean by processes? You know, we have those. Well, what most people find when they start digging into their processes is that true? Truly, the processes and systems that they have in their business aren't what they should be. I'll give you a case in point. Right. We think about all of a sudden now we have maybe 20% of your team or 50% of your team that never worked remotely is now working remotely. Are they really up to speed on if they didn't have to use it every day before on your messaging tool, Microsoft Teams, Slack, whatever it might be, Maybe now they need to start using your CRM in a different way than they did before for communication. Do you have the processes and systems in place? We might have thought we did because we only had a certain group of people using the products before, but it's different now. So I want to talk about a few key things that go along when we talk about procedures and really, what does that mean? So the first one I wanted to talk about is really the idea of encouraging your team to be involved in the process. First, as an executive, take a step back, look at how does customer service work? How does sales, marketing, hr, how do all of those teams work? Have they been evolving as our business has evolved? Are they growing? Is the team engaged in helping us make those things better? First look at it from that way. Then get with a group of leaders within your organization. You might have one other leader, co founder, whatever it might be, or you might have a large management team and then start dissecting. What could we do better here? The first thing we want to do once we get past that stage, though, is get our teams thinking about our processes. You know, almost all of us have systems and processes or workflows built into our business that we put in place because we started the business. Who knows better than we do? Well, sometimes the people, as our business evolves, that are closer to the customer really know better. You know, this idea of setting up processes and having groups or departments look at how we're doing things while we have maybe a little bit more time right now is key. So encourage that team mentality and that group think to figure out how do we make our business better. The other thing we want to do with that, as we get the teams involved. So really kind of our second point is as we get those teams involved, we want to make sure that they feel like their voices are being heard. Right? It's easy to say the words, hey, we want to get better and we're going to rah, rah, pull together and make our processes better. But if we have a structured way of looking at things department by department, goal by goal, System by system, technology by technology, and we make the teams feel like they're involved. This is where people start feeling like they work for a whole different organization because they feel ownership. They really look at this and say, you know, my leadership cares about me and understands what I'm hearing from the customer or vendors or whoever it might be. Third point is, don't be a know it. All right? As founders, as executives, we've probably risen through the ranks or done those jobs somewhere else. And it's extremely easy for us to get this tunnel vision that we know best. Listen to our teams, take this opportunity to make your teams feel more part of the company, and that'll pay off in spades. When people are engaged in the growth and the development of your company, it retains employees. It helps you find new employees because of your culture, because cultures and your internal growth really, really defines itself. As you get through this process of building more and better processes and updated systems and processes in your business, people feel engaged. Last. I'm sorry, second to the last thing I wanted to talk about was documentation. You know, there's nothing worse than developing a new process and not having it documented well. So if we start changing how we use a piece of software or how we engage with customers or how we send samples, whatever it might be, how we do demonstrations, document, document, document those. Whether you have a specific tool to do that or you use your CRM to do that, whatever it might be, document the process. And most importantly, in that documentation, set the plan of how you're going to readdress and continue to review and expand and evolve your processes. Then the last thing we wanted to talk about with this is technology. Invest in the technology, invest in the tools, and get those things started now. Because you know what? We at Leadsport, we have some customers who are really engaging right now in the idea of saying, you know what, all of our sales teams are at home, they're not traveling. They're available to work on new processes and work on new technology. Learn, be trained on new technology. Look into that in your business. See if, as you're looking at processes, do you have the right messaging tool, Microsoft Teams, or Slack? You know, in our organization, we just started last month really kind of hunkering down with Microsoft Teams. We've got project management tools integrated into it, our messaging, all of that. And so we spend our day pretty much in Leadsmart and Microsoft Teams right now. But we've done that during this downturn to really get that set up in the. In the organization. So you have the ability to do that too. Take a look around, see where you could improve. Think about improving now. Don't be a know it all, get your team involved, document, get technology in place. Take advantage of the time you have now to maybe get the technology that you need. And lastly, focus on springboard, not spring break, because we have an opportunity to come out of this better. So processes, when done right, can really enhance your organization and and set you up for great growth for the future. So thanks for spending a few minutes with me today. If you're seeing this on LinkedIn, please comment. If you're seeing it on YouTube, click down below with a comment. Thumbs up. Subscribe. Get involved in our community and we'll look forward to talking to you as we get out of these challenging times. Because we have the opportunity for a springboard, not a spring break.