Friday Challenge: The One-Process Challenge

It's Friday!

So you know what that means.

I've got homework for you.

We've looked at numbers.

We've followed a customer.

We've talked to an employee.

This week, we're going after something hiding in plain sight:

A process.

Every organization has them.

Approvals.

Reports.

Customer onboarding.

Purchase orders.

Expense requests.

Scheduling.

Inventory.

Hiring.

Billing.

Follow-ups.

Some are efficient.

Some are necessary.

And some exist for one reason:

“That's how we've always done it.”

Your assignment this week is simple:

Choose one process and follow it from beginning to end.

Not how you think it works.

Find out how it actually works.

Step 1: Pick Something That Happens Often

Don't choose the most complicated process in your company.

Choose something ordinary.

Something employees do every day or every week.

Maybe it's processing a customer request.

Approving an invoice.

Preparing a weekly report.

Scheduling an appointment.

Submitting an expense.

Handling a complaint.

Then start at the beginning.

Step 2: Count the Steps

How many steps does it take to complete?

Five?

Ten?

Twenty?

Write them down.

Then look at every step and ask:

Why do we do this?

That's an important question.

Because sometimes processes accumulate steps over time.

A requirement gets added.

Someone creates another spreadsheet.

Another person gets copied on an email.

Another approval is introduced.

A temporary workaround quietly becomes permanent.

Eventually, nobody remembers why half of it exists.

They just keep doing it.

Step 3: Find the Waiting

Now look for something many organizations underestimate:

Waiting.

Where does the process stop?

Waiting for approval?

Waiting for information?

Waiting for another department?

Waiting for someone to respond to an email?

Waiting for data to be entered?

The work itself might take 20 minutes.

The process might take three days.

That's an entirely different problem.

Step 4: Find the Repetition

Next question:

Is anyone entering, copying, checking, or sending the same information more than once?

If so, you've found something worth investigating.

Repeated manual work creates opportunities for:

Errors.

Delays.

Inconsistency.

And wasted time.

It may also reveal an opportunity for automation.

Step 5: Look at the Data

Now measure what you found.

How long does the process take?

How often does it occur?

How many employees touch it?

How often are mistakes made?

How much rework is required?

How often does the customer wait because of it?

This is where a small inefficiency can suddenly look very different.

Imagine a task wastes just 10 minutes.

No big deal.

Until you discover 15 employees perform it twice a day.

That's five hours of organizational time.

Every day.

More than 25 hours every week.

Suddenly, those 10 minutes matter.

Your Challenge

Before Monday, choose one process.

Then:

Follow it.

Count it.

Time it.

Question it.

And identify one step that could be:

Removed.

Simplified.

Combined.

Or automated.

You don't need to redesign the entire organization.

Just make one process better.

One Important Rule

Don't begin by asking:

“Who designed this?”

That turns process improvement into blame.

Ask:

“Does this still serve us?”

Processes should evolve as businesses evolve.

What worked when you had 10 employees may not work with 100.

What worked with 100 customers may not work with 10,000.

And what made sense before today's technology may not make sense anymore.

Monday Morning

Bring what you discovered to your team.

Show them the process.

Show them the friction.

Show them the numbers.

Then ask:

“If we were creating this process today, would we build it this way?”

If the answer is no...

You've got work to do.

And you've also found an opportunity.

Final Thought

Efficiency isn't always about asking people to work faster.

Sometimes it's about removing the things slowing them down.

One unnecessary step.

One outdated approval.

One duplicate entry.

One avoidable delay.

Small inefficiencies repeated thousands of times become expensive.

Small improvements repeated thousands of times become powerful.

So that's your homework.

Find one process.

Follow it.

Question it.

Improve it.

Because sometimes the easiest way to improve performance isn't asking people to do more.

It's giving them less unnecessary work to do.

#FridayChallenge #GoAnalytics #ProcessImprovement #BusinessAnalytics #OperationalExcellence #ContinuousImprovement #BusinessEfficiency #Leadership #MichaelGrismore

Champions don't guess. Neither should your business.