All of us are using processes to do the things that we need to do. We use a process to get ready in the morning. We use a process to determine what groceries we need to buy and how often to buy them. We use a process when consoling a friend who may be sad or agitated. We use all of these ‘processes’ all of the time. Often the processes we use in our daily lives are unconscious and inconsistent. However, in business, inconsistency is not your friend. To make improvements and to maximize your results, it’s important to focus on the processes that you’re using and to analyze them and perform tweaks to make them more profitable. Focusing on processes reduces decision fatigue, allows you to maximize your output, and makes delegation easier.
Reduce Decision Fatigue
It’s a known fact that making decisions is taxing on the brain. As an entrepreneur you’re faced with many decisions that must be made throughout the day, so it’s best to try to reduce their numbers as much as possible. Designing processes around the tasks that need to be preformed throughout the day eliminates any ‘guess work’ involved and reduces the number of decisions you need to make.
Maximize Efficiency
Just because something is working doesn’t mean it’s working as well as it could be. By developing processes you can monitor exactly what is done and the outcomes from performing those tasks and do tweaks and tests to try to maximize your desired results. Without having processes in place, you’re just slopping your effort around and hoping for the best results.
Ease with Delegation
Focusing on processes has the added benefit of allowing you to outsource tasks that need to be performed. If you can break a function that you perform for your business down to a series of easily communicated steps, it may be in your best interest to outsource those tasks and focus on generating more revenue for your business.
Creating Processes
It’s best to create an ‘employee manual’ for your business, even if you’re the only one working for your company. This could be as simple as a folder in google drive. Start by creating a list of all the tasks that you perform for your business and break them down between daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly tasks. Next, create bullet points of what needs to be done. Spell this out step-by-step. If you’re going to eventually use this for delegation, it may be good to create a video and upload as an unlisted or private video to YouTube.
Follow Your Own Processes
Once you have your employee manuals in place, be sure to follow your procedures. If you start to notice that something isn’t working, be sure to modify that procedure. If you start to think that a step of that procedure is inefficient, do something different and see if you get better results. If you do, change the procedure. Once you have your procedures in place, you’ll be maximizing your outputs and delegating tasks in no time.