Is Your Company a Well-Oiled Machine…or Does It Need a Tune-Up?

The most highly productive and profitable companies we work with create and follow processes in every area of their company, for every function, without exception. These processes drive the various functions of the organization, but they are continually reviewed and upgraded to ensure they are up to date and relevant in an ever-changing business climate.

This means, of course, that employee input is essential. Average employees can follow good processes, but only strong employees will recognize when processes are no longer effective or know how they should evolve or change.

Please don’t be delusional; following a process doesn’t mean being robotic or pretending you’ve suddenly acquired an engineering degree. It does mean acknowledging that your people should be attacking similar tasks in a similar way. For example, if you are effective at teaching your kids the best ways for them to stay on top of their monthly bill payments, and you then coach them well on what they’ve learned from you about carrying out the various steps, they will probably end up following the same process. It works this way in business as well. You share a process that’s been proven effective: "When doing X, here is what we do."

As the leader of the company, it is ultimately your responsibility to confirm that within each process, there is a series of steps that lead each function to the desired outcome you determined. You must also identify other areas of the company and its functions that would benefit from good processes and make sure those processes are created and followed. These are, of course, the “playbooks” for that role. Playbooks come in all different shapes and sizes, depending on what they’re trying to accomplish. A playbook can show an individual the steps for success, whether the objective is simple or complex, team-driven or individual-driven, long-term or short-term.

Creating Playbooks for your operation will do several things beyond the obvious of making it more productive and profitable. It will help you ensure a more consistent, high-quality customer experience. It will fast-track the onboarding of new employees to profitable contribution. It will enlarge your hiring pool of candidates by making “experience” in the role (or a similar role) less important…and the list goes on and on.

Understand this about developing playbooks for each of the roles; you will not do this throughout the building in one day. It is a process. Begin with where in the organization you believe it will have the biggest and most immediate impact. You will then methodically work through the organization until you have completed a playbook for every role. Secondly, you are never really done with this process. You must set a cadence of how long it will be (on a regular basis) before we review and update the playbook for each role and calendar block those dates.

Key Attributes of an effective process in a Playbook:

- Well documented
- Clear, no room for misinterpretation
- Repeatable
- Continuously re-evaluated to ensure ongoing effectiveness
- Employee training and development are built around it
- Connected to someone who is accountable

Questions to ask yourself as you implement this best practice include:

- Does everyone in every role have a playbook for all of their processes?
- Is someone fully responsible for making certain the key attributes are met in the playbook?
- Are we looking at the processes objectively – or looking for reasons not to invest the time, money, and other resources to document processes or make changes to improve them?
- Which new process (update of a process) will have the biggest impact on our company?
- When will the work start to implement Playbooks?

Need help with sales skills or coaching to take your company to the next level? Learn more about Sales Mastery contact Dan Nausley at dan.nausley@sandler.com, 423.702.5579.