Imagine a future where your employees feel so responsible for the work they do for you that they insist on writing their procedures down to be sure things get done right when they’re out on vacation. This level of commitment from your team is what we’re after, and we have the skills to get you there. But first we’ll ask you to set aside some ideas you might have about documenting systems and procedures.
Most business owners feel like they have to write procedures and then train the team to every exact step of every process. There are a few things broken about this strategy:
- An owner has critical strategic and financial tasks to perform for the company and shouldn’t be the person writing procedures.
- Employees are much more likely to follow the procedures that they have helped develop.
- Systems and software are changing so quickly nowadays that if your employees don’t own the procedures they’ll be hopelessly out of date before you know it.
Of course, even when your operating procedures are a team effort, it is a project to be managed, coordinated, facilitated and lead. That’s where we can help.
Getting it Done
Getting your Standard Operating Procedures written is one of those things that always seems to get pushed to the bottom of the action item list. Even when your employees agree it’s important, there are countless interruptions and day to day operations that take priority.
When you work with our team, we’re able to bring a higher sense of accountability and performance to the project. We’ll break it down into bite size pieces, get agreement from the team on timelines, edit for clarity and consistency and stay on goal until all of your critical procedures are documented.
Key Performance Indicators
Key Performance Indicators (KPI) are the measures of success that matter most to you. Ideally, every team member, every department and every work unit in the business will have clear goals and results defined, and the measure of those results will be your KPI. At peak performance, your financial statements will reflect those measures and show how your team is doing at reaching your targeted goals.
We understand the need to quickly and accurately see the results of operations in your monthly financial statements. We’ll set up your KPI measures, establish your bookkeeping systems so they capture the correct data from operations and generate reports that give you the information you need to manage from the numbers.
Refresh & Review
One of the trickiest things about Operating Procedures is keeping them current. There are many, many reasons systems will change over time, and usually in such small steps that it’ hard to notice or track. Whether it’s just human nature, evolving software or growth and transition, a review of your procedures might find a lot of “oh, we don’t do it that way anymore!”, or “oh yeah, I remember why we used to do that step!”. It’s a great idea to review your systems regularly enough that you don’t lose key steps or bring on a new person and train them to an old way of doing things. We’ll help you set up a review process and timeline, so you can be confident your business stays on track!
Testimonials
“Eden, It’s a pleasure working with you to develop business for my firm! Your insight with business practices and the many suggestions you’ve given me over the past two years has helped me tighten up work-flow procedures. My staff and I are much more efficient, which increases the capacity we have to take on more clients!”
“I had been in business for 9 years and I was pretty much resigned to how it was running: low on energy, thin on margins, sluggish on growth, and I had convinced myself that this was somehow ok. Within six months of working with Eden and setting clear goals for my team, I’ve launched a new product line, and I’m on track for 30% growth in the next year.”
“Working with Eden Lovejoy, we went from zero closed sales accounts and growing complaints… to top sales nationwide for three months in a row. The best part is that we landed an account that tripled our company overnight.”
