3 signs that your core values aren't real

You probably care a whole lot about making sure the way you do business ACTUALLY reflects your desired culture and core values. Of course you do.

But how do you know for sure that your clients and employees are getting the right experience that's aligned to your values each-and-every time?

Here are 3 ways to know that your core values aren’t consistently being applied in your business:

1. Every single employee (including you) can’t list your core values and explain what each one means in their own words.

2. You haven’t documented your core business processes.

3. If you HAVE documented your core business processes, you haven’t assessed them for alignment to your core values.

If you checked one or more boxes above, take heart. It’s totally doable to move those values out of the haze and make them stick in your day-to-day business. But don’t try to tackle it all at once - each little step you take in uncovering and clarifying how “things should be done around here” makes an impact.

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Need help communicating your core values or documenting your core processes? We do that every day! Set up a free call to see if we can help!

How to Document a Broken Process

All business leaders want to have clear and efficient systems and processes documented in an easy-to-use and always-updated tool. But how do you build your “Business Playbook” if your processes aren’t even close to “clear and efficient” yet?

The answer: You don’t.

Now, there are certainly exceptions to the rule, such as if you need to urgently train someone or delegate a key process to another team member. In those cases, it does make sense to go ahead and create some “good enough” videos or process documents, just to get the job done for the time-being.

However, if your processes are truly broken and wildly inefficient, it makes sense to spend time identifying and analyzing how you’re doing things today so you can find opportunities to clarify and improve your systems and processes. Because if you write down the broken way to do things, you’re just going to further solidify those inefficiencies and pass them on to the next generation of employees.

When tackling broken process, we recommend the following steps:

1. Identify the broken processes. This can be done through a combination of interviews and observations.

2. Prioritize the processes to target first. Which ones are costing you the most? Which ones, if addressed, would bring the greatest return on investment? That’s where you start.

3. Gather the team. Identify at least one representative from each team that is a part of the process to participate in the process improvement project. THIS IS ESSENTIAL.

4. Map the existing process. Hold a meeting with your identified team members to visually map out the EXISTING process step-by-step. You’ll likely come up with all kinds of ways you can make things better during this conversation, but just write them down for later.

5. Analyze the process to find opportunities. Review how you’re doing things and flag the parts that are inefficient, could be automated, or just plain suck. Ideally, you should identify how to measure the success of the changes you’re making so you can check for success at the end.

6. Map the new process. Now that you know what you want to fix, create a new version of your process map to represent the changes you’ll make.

7. Implement the changes. This could be implementing new software, communicating policy/process changes to your team, or completely restructuring a team. This is could be a 5-minute task or a 5-month project.

8. Test, monitor, and adjust. Your changes might not work exactly the way you’d hoped. You need to spend some time assessing whether you’re getting the result you’re looking for and making tweaks, as necessary.

9. Document the new process. Now that you have clarity on how things “should” work, you can start writing down the step-by-step of how things work.

If you’ve got someone on your team who’s great at facilitating a project like this, great! If not, it’s definitely worth the investment to get an outside expert to come in and look at things with a fresh perspective.

One-by-one you can fix each of the key processes in your business and get them documented and communicated to your team and watch your team’s efficiency soar.

It’s great fun.

Why Project Management Alone isn't Enough

Often, when I tell people how I help small businesses, they say, "Oh, I get it! You're a project manager!" And while I do love a good project, that's not quite it. I live in the processes.

Processes and projects. They even start with the same 3 letters. They’re practically identical, right? Not so much.

Let’s unpack how projects and processes fit together...

Projects

Getting Things Done author, David Allen says, "Projects are defined as outcomes that will require more than one action step to complete and that you can mark off as finished in the next 12 months."

Really, David Allen? Everything with more than one action step is a project? That seems a bit dramatic.

But it turns out, it’s not.  You might be tempted to consider something as simple as “writing this week’s blog post” as a task, rather than a project. But think of all those little steps that go into it: You pick a topic, you write a draft, someone on your team proofreads, you post it, you share it. You have to complete each and every step in the right order.

It’s a project.

And even if you still disagree, just go with me on this for now, for the sake of having clear definitions.

Processes

Comparing a project to a process isn’t like comparing apples and oranges. It’s more like comparing apples and ... fruit. Projects are completed as part of a process (and hopefully a repeatable and scalable one!).

If we take our “writing this week’s blog post” project above as an example, we would ideally be following a standardized process for how the team creates weekly blog posts. We would have already defined each of the steps that are done every time, the order in which they need to happen, and the approximate number of days needed for each step. Following the set process takes away any worry of forgetting a step or getting off-track on deadlines. You know you’ve already figured out the most efficient way to do it, and there’s no need for lots of team communication to figure out handoffs and what comes next because we’ve already decided ahead of time.

So...

A process is a framework for doing repeatable, multi-step work.

Every time you run through the steps of that process to achieve a particular outcome, you’ve completed a project.

Let’s play with this idea in a few commonplace examples:

• You have a process for using your journal and cookbooks to do your weekly meal-planning and grocery shopping. This Sunday, you will use that process to complete a project called, “This week’s meal-plan and groceries.”

• Your business has a process for onboarding new employees. Tomorrow, you will use that process to start a project called, “Onboard Andrea Baker.”

• You have a process for packing for camping trips. Last weekend, you used that process to complete a project called, “Pack for camping in Flagstaff.”

What’s wrong with running a project without a process?

There’s nothing inherently wrong with doing a project without an overarching process. But if it’s a project you frequently do that is a core aspect of your business, you’re probably wasting precious time re-figuring-out how to do that thing each and every time. I’m willing to bet there are a lot of important things in your business you’re treating like unique projects when they really should be turned into processes. “Processified,” if you will.

So, no, you don’t always need to standardize the process. Sometimes you just do the project. But this one question will help shed some light on whether to standardize or not…

Will we need to do a project like this again in the future?

• If so, you’ll want to work towards standardizing the process so you can do it awesomely (and efficiently!) in the future. You don’t have to get crazy about it, but jot down some notes about the steps you took. And then keep updating it as you and your team repeat it and get smarter. The future version of yourself will thank you.

• If not, skip standardizing your process. There’s no need for you to document your small business’s process for setting up an LLC, because you’ll only need to do that once.

But even when you’re doing a one-time project, there are processes that can help:

• If lots of other people have done this thing before, follow their process. You might as well use a tried and true method instead of re-inventing the wheel.

• If your project is truly a unicorn, use a project-planning process like Seth Godin’s ShipIt Journal to walk you through all of the steps and considerations for your project. It’s like having a coach alongside you, asking you key questions as you create your project plan.

And don’t forget, processes are meant to evolve - don’t be afraid to edit them regularly. As Trainual Founder and CEO, Chris Ronzio says in his recent Inc article (follow him on Twitter):

“Think of your policies and procedures like the leaderboard on an arcade game. As soon as someone comes up with a better way to do something, it should rise to the top as the clear and obvious winner, and everyone should recognize it.”

The really cool thing is that after you complete a few of the same type of project and begin to standardize the process, it gets easier and easier. And that’s how you turn pro.

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If you need help standardizing your processes to scale your business, Process Mentors would love to chat! Click here to set up a free initial call.