Last week I was in Oklahoma delivering a talk on hiring at a national convention of small business owners. It got me to thinking just how much trouble people have with this subject. Then the more I talked with the group the more I realized it wasn’t hiring they needed help with, it was standard process.
What is standard process? Why is it so important? The answers I was getting were all over the place. So, I decided to define the term and give you some basic tools to help you establish a productive, expanding business.
Standard is simply having an exact way of doing something that is agreed upon by all members of the group.
Process is the step by step actions you take to get something done.
Put those two together and you have standard process, an exact step by step way of doing something that is agreed upon by all group members involved.
Now, write it down and issue it to all members of the group. Have them all study it and then make sure they understand and can APPLY it!
If you don’t check to make sure they understand it and can apply it, then what’s the point? If you’re going to become a master of something then you need to drill it!
Here is how you make a standard process.
- Define the problem you’re trying to solve.
- Define the exact result you want from this problem being solved.
- List out the step to get that problem solved and the result you want, backwards! That’s right do it from the finished result to the beginning, step by step.
- Now write out each step into simple to do instructions, if you can make videos then do so.
- Have the person you want to do those steps to study what you created.
- Check them out on each step and make sure they can do them.
- Drill, drill, drill until they are perfect!!!
Let me know how you do. I love hearing success stories.
