5 Process-Inspired Ways to Improve Business Operations

With many internal factors hindering today’s businesses, execution and measurement is undoubtedly one of the biggest struggles for large organizations that are trying to improve business operations. A recent study indicated that 91 percent of employees identify learning and development opportunities as key to a high-performance culture. Employees want to improve business operations, but they aren’t always being given the resources to do so.

1. Iterate your vision over time. If you don’t know where you want your business to go or how you want it to grow, your ability to drive success will get lost in the muck of ambiguity. It’s not enough to have a clear vision from the onset. Great companies stay true to their mission and iterate the company vision as the market changes. A relevant long-term vision will structure day-to-day activities, inform your processes and produce effective risk assessment.
2. Assess your implementation plan. Every business has different products, goals, customers and cultures. The processes Google uses will be different from yours. Your plan should align with your company’s culture and fit the specific needs you outlined for your future goals. A good process improvement partner will customize its learning initiatives for your organization, and help you implement a relevant plan.
3. Develop a problem-solving framework. Your learning partner will also help you create a problem-solving framework from which to work. This plan will offer your employees structure and consistency around what exactly is expected of them. At OpusWorks, we offer powerful problem-solving plans and tactics to our clients post-course.
4. Invest in your employees. When a company reaches a certain size, key factors such as streamlining process improvement initiatives, managing foundational processes and hiring the right people fall to the wayside. As a c-level executive, it’s your job to think about the business on a large scale and how to increase ROI. It’s easy to look at your employees as numbers on a spreadsheet instead of actual human beings. All of those things are critical, yes, but so is investing the appropriate amount of time and resources into making your employees feel valued.
5. Customize your team’s training. A standardized training program is not designed to meet each organization’s individualized needs. It’s best to deploy flexible blended learning solutions which are customized and relevant to your teams’ goals.