How to build Process Excellence before scaling your Business?

How to use Visual Systems Thinking for solving your toughest Business Problems?

It is a TED Talk worth watching again - Got a wicked problem? First, tell me how you make toast.

Here are a sample list of questions from Tom Wujec's website that visual systems thinking can be applied to:
1. Strategic Organisational Questions:
i. Where is your organization now?
ii. What is your noble purpose?
iii. How are global forces shaping your business?
iv. How are industry forces affecting you?
v. What is driving your market now?
vi. What is your essential offering?
vii. How will you delight your customers?
viii. How will you stand out and win?
ix. Where will you invest to grow?
x. What do you stand for?
xi. What is your business model?
xii. How will you track and measure success?

2. Tactical Organisational Questions:
i. Where are you creating value in your current business process?
ii. What is your approach to improving value? Why?
iii. How will you attract more and better customers?
iv. How will you get customers to buy?
v. How will you make your customers feel great at every touch point?
vi. How will you build your offering more efficiently?
vii. How will you do more of what works and less of what doesn't?
viii. How will you help your employees thrive?
ix. How will you run better meetings?
x. How will you respond to change more nimbly?
xi. How will your team work better?
xii. How will you measure your organisation's effectiveness?

Here is a PDF Document from Tom Wujec with a proposed approach on how to engage your teams in a collaborative visual systems thinking exercise to discover answers to the above questions.

​It would work very well to use this process to co-create process maps with your teams for the 4 to 9 key processes on your PACE (Process Accountability Chart) tool.questions illuminate how you can begin to see your business and 

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Here's a PDF of the PACE tool:

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And, the PACE tool in an Excel:

process_accountability_chart.xlsx
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File Type:	xlsx

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We may be experts but when we tell people what to do, they don't own the solution and therefore, don't act on our solutions. But, when we ask a question and they answer the question. They own the answer and they act in alignment with that answer. Therein lies the power of leading with questions.

Our contribution as business owners, CEOs and leaders is not that we know it all. Our contribution comes from people making our knowledge as their own and taking actions from there. That requires us to be in Gear 3 Consciousness for us to exercise Gear 3 leadership muscle - Communicating Powerfully in the World of Others. Top Gear 3 RYD Distinctions that support us to communicate powerfully in the world of others:
i. Childlike Trust and Faith
ii. Relationship of Equals
iii. Raw Courage
iv. Vulnerable Authenticity - Being authentic about our own inauthenticities
v. Humility
vi. Committed Listening
vii. Leading with Questions
viii. Reverence

How to build Process Excellence before scaling your Business?
 
All the Process Excellence work which includes:

i. documenting Process Maps of key 4 to 9 processes documented in PACE,
ii. defining 2 or 3 key metrics / KPIs for each process, and
iii. measuring the metrics in real-time to identify process gaps for continuous process innovation

is the domain of Mountain 3 (Mountain of Growth) on our RYD Business Excellence journey.
Mountain 3 needs to be climbed before we step-up the accelerator to climb Mountain 4 (Mountain of Scale).
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For every Quarterly Meeting with your Leadership Team, pick up a process that is in red (all KPIs not met) or yellow (only few KPIs met), and co-innovate the process with your team to green status. 

Every Quarter in your OPSP, choose 2 Critical Numbers to play for - one on the people side (Get, Keep or Grow customers, employees or shareholders) and one on the process side (Make the processes Better, Faster or Cheaper). This creates Balanced Growth.

Here's the process you can follow to build Process Excellence on Mountain 3 (Mountain of Growth) of the RYD Business Excellence journey before you scale your business on Mountain 4 (Mountain of Scale):
1. Fill up the Process Accountability Chart (PACe tool) with key 4 to 9 key processes that define your business, 2 or 3 metrics for each process and aspired for measure for each metric.
2. Pick up a process to innovate for better outcomes. 
3. It's best that you, the business owner / CEO, first documents the process themselves for better understanding to effectively lead a gamestorming session with your team to co-create the final process flow map. This exercise will give you insights into why the process is failing and / or how the process can be improved significantly. These insights will support you to effectively lead with questions in the gamestorming deep-dive for the team to reflect on points on the Ball of Perspective that they may have missed. During the deep-dive, you will also uncover fresh insights as the team gamestorms.
4. Use the approach shared in the PDF - A primer in Systems Thinking - shared above to lead the gamestorming deep-dive for the team to co-create the final process using sticky notes which can later be transcribed digitally.
5. Measure the process KPIs / metrics monthly / weekly / daily based on the process. The gap between the aspired for metric and the actual outcome is the Degree of Innovation that the process needs to be iterated through, as per the frequency of review that you defined In the Excel PACe.
6. When there is a gap between the aspired for process KPI and the actual outcome, do a root cause analysis using a 5 Why Analysis and arrive at a solution using a 5 How Analysis

The five whys and five hows techniques constitute a questioning process designed to drill down into the details of a problem or a solution and peel away the layers of symptoms. The technique was originally developed by Sakichi Toyoda who stated that "by repeating why five times, the nature of the problem as well as its solution becomes clear."

The five whys are used for drilling down into a problem and the five hows are used to develop the details of a solution to a problem. Both are designed to bring clarity and refinement to a problem statement or a potential solution and get to the root cause or root solution.

For more on this approach, click on this link - 5 Whys and 5 Hows

Build strong processes for people to create Excellence rather than managing people to create Excellence.

Throw a Process at a Problem, instead of People.

Building a great business is a fun team sport. Keep playing to joyously lead yourself and your business from good to great, realize your dreams and have it all with ease and grace; while having lots of fun and adventure along the way 💜

Loving you,
j.