If your processes are designed and run properly, you likely shouldn’t have any delays. 

But what if the great processes that you’ve constructed to the nines are still delivering delayed outputs? Did you miss something? Is the process simply not good enough? 

NO. 

If your processes are good, there could be another reason for delays. The answer: Bottlenecks. 

Think of your processes as a sunny day at the beach. You’ve come prepared with sunscreen, hats, sunglasses, snacks, an umbrella, and tons of water. But in the middle of your beach day, you run out of the water screaming with a jellyfish attached to your leg. 

The jellyfish is the bottleneck, and trust me, it stings just as bad for your business when one of those babies wraps itself around your company processes. 

The only difference is you can’t plan for the jellyfish. You can plan for bottlenecks with an effective process management strategy. 

Here’s how: 

• What is a bottleneck? 
• Signs you have a bottleneck
• Types of bottlenecks 
• How to identify bottlenecks in a process
• How software tools can help with bottleneck management 
• Bottleneck management: Prevention is better than cure

Companies need to undergo change all the time. But when do slight improvements need to be made and when is radical change a necessity? That’s where process reengineering and continuous improvement come into play. 

Each is vital to the success of a company but can’t be used to handle the same set of changes. Optimizing your business operations means knowing when to make continuous improvements and when to use process reengineering efforts. 

So, when’s the right time to use what?  

• Diving into process reengineering
• A look at continuous improvement
• What is the difference between process reengineering and continuous improvement?
• Process reengineering vs continuous improvement: Which should you pick? 
• Optimizing your processes looks different for everyone 

86% of executives and employees believe a lack of collaboration is the main reason behind company failure. From this, it’s easy to see how an entire company feels more connected when everyone is working with the same vision and information. 

That’s what makes process transparency so crucial to organizational success. Studies show that organizations with more transparent processes help enhance collaboration, increase engagement, and improve productivity. 

Along with this, employees also believe workplace transparency to be a large contributing factor to job satisfaction. 

So, if your company lacks process visibility, you’re not providing transparency in the workplace and run the risk of losing valuable employees. 

• Why is process transparency important? 
• What are the common signs your processes lack transparency? 
• What happens when process visibility is poor? 
• What do you get from good business process transparency? 
• Investing in the right tools makes everything more transparent 

What is a process, exactly? Technically speaking, you can boil just about anything down to a process. Here are a few examples of some processes that you might find in your everyday life.

• Hiring or firing someone
• Conducting a meeting
• Creating a weekly blog post
• Cooking a meal
• Pouring a glass of milk

Everything is a process, but some are certainly more straightforward than others. Either way, document all of them! Well, maybe not the glass of milk one…

For the rest, let’s look at some process documentation best practices:

• Why do I need to document my company’s processes?
• How do I start documenting a process?
• Share your process documentation

Business process management software (BPM) can increase company success by 70%. That’s if you’re using a tool that aligns with your business needs. 

With so many options on the market, it can be daunting to pick the right one. Doing a quick Google search will leave you paralyzed because of the endless options available. 

That’s why you’re here. We’re keeping to our promise of ‘the best,’ which is why we’ve rounded up some of the greatest workflow software solutions available to make your choice easier. 

In this Process Street article, we’re talking about all things workflow software solution-related to help you find the perfect match for your company: 

• Do you need a workflow software solution? 
• How good HR workflow software can help you
• The best HR workflow software solution
• You’re only as good as the tools you use 

Let’s dive right in! 

No process is perfect; there’s always room to improve. Unfortunately, many teams have no way to identify, test, and deploy the changes they make, meaning each tweak is a roll of the dice.

The savings can be massive, but you need a continuous improvement program to make sure that the changes you make won’t make your operations a whole lot harder.

“1 in 10 improvements save money… [each saving, on average,] $31,043 in its first year of implementation.
1 in 4 improvements save time… [each saving, on average,] 270 hours in its first year of implementation.”
– KaiNexus, The ROI of Continuous Improvement

Most successful changes will also make your employees’ jobs easier (and more enjoyable) to perform. You’ll be saving time and money, but you’ll also be getting far better value out of your current efforts and operations.

However, I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s start from the top.

• What is continuous improvement?
• Incremental vs. breakthrough improvements
• The benefits of continuous improvement
• How to deploy continuous improvement
• Improvement resources to dive deeper

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Having an operations manual may not be glamorous, but preventing the disasters caused by human error and bad processes can save your business and even (in extreme circumstances) millions of lives.

If you’ve ever seen Dr. Strangelove, you’ll know it’s ridiculous. You’ve got a mad scientist, a cowboy pilot riding a bomb as it falls, and a nuclear holocaust brought about by a series of overblown human (and mechanical) errors.

Yet, despite being criticized as unrealistic, at the time it was entirely possible for human error to cause a Third World War. Hell, human error has already caused the worst nuclear accident to date.

“A perfect storm of 6 human errors — culminating with staff thinking it was ok to turn off the emergency cooling system — caused the Chernobyl disaster, costing an inflation-adjusted $720 billion, 30 deaths and an extreme amount of unsafe radiation.” – Ben Brandall, How Processes Protect Your Business From Crashing and Burning

The truth is, the only way to prevent such errors is to document workflows and processes, and the only way to make sure your employees know what they have to do, how to do it, and have the resources to do it is to create your own operations manual.

In this Process Street article, we’ll be covering:

• What is an operations manual?
• Why is having an operations manual important?
• What to include in your operations manual
• How to create an operations manual

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96% of businesses use some kind of business process documentation, indicating a desire to document processes. Yet only 2% have fully documented processes that can be relied on for smooth business functioning, despite the widely reported benefits. There seems to be a knowledge gap preventing the full documentation of business operations. This article aims to close that gap and make it easier to build business processes for leaders worldwide.

A business process is a set of steps that, when completed in the required order, deliver the desired business outcome. Process building – aka business process documentation – is the documentation of these steps to create an actionable system to work from.

In this Process Street article, we turn to the process experts. We asked our internal team to give their top tips on process building, and here’s what we found out. We present you with our 8 time-saving tips for efficient process building.

• Tip #1: Start with the big tasks & work your way down
• Tip #2: Quickly copy processes from Excel into Process Street
• Tip #3: Drag and drop media files directly into your workflow templates
• Tip #4: Tag your teammates directly with comments inside of workflow runs
• Tip #5: Use Conditional Logic to show/hide training content (and avoid inconveniencing experienced users)
• Tip #6: Add custom tasks to build truly dynamic processes
• Tip #7: Build a follow-up system & never miss tasks
• Tip #8: Build one-task-processes & master your daily tasks

Let’s start building!
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Project proposals are how you can get management to act on your ideas. They’re the bottom-up version of a project request form.

Writing a project proposal isn’t rocket science, but it is a lot harder if you don’t have something like a template to give you a head start.

Using a template for your proposals gives you a document which you can reference throughout the entire project. It’s a great example of effective business process management – the proposal acts as a banner that your whole team can rally around to ensure you’re all working towards the same goal.

So, in this Process Street post, I’ll go through how to create a project proposal, that gets approved, by going through the following topics:

• Free project proposal template
• 12 more free project proposal templates
• What makes a good project proposal?
• Key tips for writing effective project proposals
• Writing a lot of project proposals? Check this out!
• More stuff to help you write amazing project proposals

Ready to get started?
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“It is largely determined by the mindset and practices of teamwork, not by the design and structures of effective teams. Teaming is teamwork on the fly.” – Professor Amy Edmondson, Teaming: How Organizations Learn, Innovate, and Compete in the Knowledge Economy

When I started this post for Process Street, it suddenly occurred to me exactly how much of my time is spent on the concept of “teams” – writing about them, talking about them, thinking about them, participating in them.

Teams have taken over my life. It was only a matter of time before I ran into “teaming.”

Teaming was coined and developed by Professor Amy Edmondson, who also has the rather distinguished achievement of founding the MIT Leadership Center.

Obviously, she’s a very qualified person who knows what she’s talking about, but when has that ever stopped my skepticism before? 🙃

I’m kidding. Teaming is an idea purpose-built for the contemporary tech-centric, remote office, pivot on a dime work environment. This post will explain what it is, how it’s been used, and how Process Street makes it easy for anyone to adopt.

• “Teaming on the fly”
• Successful teams, teaming, and a Chilean mine
• Teaming the Process Street way

Let’s team up!
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