Your Business’s Core Processes Likely Aren’t Designed Right; Here’s How to Tell

“The commander in the field is always right and the rear echelon is wrong, unless proved otherwise.” – Colin Powell

If you’re a business leader, you would never design an output from your company without knowing what the customer or end-user wants. That’s running the race blind and, while I admire the hope and optimism, we all know that’s patently stupid. 

And yet… When we look inside the business, more often than not, critical internal processes are not being designed with the end-user (employee) in mind. The person you hired to perform a task was not considered when the process for the task was created, and that’s equally stupid. How do we know how pervasive this is? 

This is exactly what we measure as part of Atlas, our performance diagnostic. After 25 years of working with teams and executives, building and evolving Atlas, and then running Atlas (and implementing solutions to the issues we uncover for clients in all industries), we know this is a prominent root cause of underperformance. There are massive gaps between team capability and team delivery for problems that are resolvable.

Now, that’s not to say that the employee end-user should be the designer of a task or sole designer of the processes. But, they will have valuable input, and they are the “customer” to keep in mind so you don’t run the race blind.

In doing so, you’ll also inherently be improving your company culture: Employees will notice that you care about a task not only getting done, but getting done in a way that is most efficient and makes the most sense for the do-er. In the end: 

What happens when you fix this; what happens when you engage in user-centric design for your internal processes? 

• Productivity goes up
• Quality goes up
• Job satisfaction goes up
• Customer satisfaction goes up

After all, the process is simply the tool that the employees use to generate customer delight. If we make the process easier to use while keeping the output the same or better, then it stands to reason that the customer will win. 

Everyone loves to say “work smarter, not harder,” but they’ve neglected to look at the own nuts and bolts of their business (the people, the processes, the lifeblood), and listen for how to make things work smarter. 

Measure how well you’re doing this, plus 44 other points denoting the gap between team capability and actual delivery, with Atlas. It takes 30 days or less, has a 98.3% client satisfaction, and a proven 12:1+ ROI. Get started.