“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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Systematizing your business is one of the biggest challenges any founder or executive faces when trying to scale.

I’ve seen it personally in my businesses and in the experiences of our customers. It’s the problem which led to us creating Process Street when I ran a small business. It’s the problem people and businesses of all sizes now come to Process Street to overcome.

Thousands of customers like Accenture, AstraZeneca, and Salesforce are solving processes from small business needs to critical enterprise and infrastructure processes.

It’s important to learn not just how to get things done, but how to do that repeatedly, effectively, and efficiently as your team grows.

This is where business systematization comes in.

A huge part of that is process management. According to our research, 42% of respondents say their teams have no time to create processes. You cannot systematize if you fail to document your processes.

In fact, process documentation is only the first step. What about adherence, integration, automation?

That’s why, as Process Street’s CEO, I was so excited to collaborate with Foundr to create a course to take you from process-less to process pro. The course is now available for registrations – you have until September 8th to get involved, so make sure to register ASAP if you’re interested.

I’ll give you the platform and the playbook to systemize your business in just 10 minutes per day, all delivered through Foundr’s intuitive learning experience.

Foundr magazine is one of the leading media outlets for entrepreneurs, small business owners, and executives. The course comes carefully prepared with video lessons, playbooks, and an explanation of my proven DIA Method.

As part of the Process Street family, I’m offering you the chance to register now and get 4 free masterclass lessons where I’ll explain my 10 minute MVP approach to supercharging processes in record time.

Click here to register!

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Premier Claims is a public adjusting firm that secures an average increase on claim payments 700% greater than before their involvement in the negotiation. They represent policyholders and contractors when negotiating fair claim settlements from insurance carriers on property damage. This includes damage from hail, wind, fire, and smoke.

Premier Claims discovered Process Street in July 2020, and have since moved many of their processes to our platform. Process Street has given Premier Claims an easy and elegant means of collecting and securely storing client information.

One such process Premier Claims uses Process Street for is their Claims and Client Intake Workflow. When the Process Street version of this workflow was first beta-tested, the salesperson’s response spoke volumes to the reliefs Process Street brings the Premier Claims team.

“[Process Street is]…literally the easiest thing in the world.” – Premier Claims salesperson, Claims and Client intake workflow Demo

Premier Claims wanted to share their positive experience from using Process Street and decided to create a video demo of their Claims and Client Workflow.
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Companies with a customer-centric account health scoring system enjoy a 95% increase in customer retention.

To be more customer-centric, you need an account health scorecard that takes a holistic approach to measure your health and your customers’ health. In this Process Street article, we’ll show you how to do that.

We’ve produced your ultimate workflow guide to help you create this account health scorecard. This template is free for you to use from your Process Street account (you can sign up to create your free account here). This workflow guide has been produced based on the Customer-Centric Digital Transformation report by Deloitte.

You’ll also learn the key benefits you’d expect from taking this holistic approach to measuring an account’s health, with two real-life case studies.

This article is structured as follows:

• Create an account health scorecard that measures customer and business success
• Why you need an account health scorecard
• Case studies: Applying the account health scorecard approach in real life

Let’s get started!
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“Employees in a well-structured onboarding program are 69% more likely to remain at the company after 3 years.” – Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), 2010 Employee Benefits

1 out of 25 employees leave their new job due to substandard onboarding experiences.

In contrast, a good employee onboarding program can boost employee retention by 69% after 3 years.

Process Street is dedicated to helping our users improve their business operations, and employee onboarding is a prime focus area. On this, we’re surprised to learn that some of our customers have been using Excel for employee onboarding.

According to Harvard Business Review, companies – on average – lose 23% of their new hires after one year. A more thoughtful approach to employee onboarding can dramatically improve this statistic for your organization; and for that, we say, get off Excel.

“…a lot of B2B productivity products are competing with Excel sheets and other products that are totally not built for the specific problem they solve.” – Bram Kanstein, Tech Out Loud, The Product Before the Business by Bram Kanstein

In this Process Street article, you’ll learn why Excel sucks for employee onboarding, and why workflow management solutions offer better onboarding solutions.

Click on the relevant subheader to jump to your section of choice, alternatively scroll down to read all we have to say.

• Scenario: Onboarding using Excel
• 8 reasons why you need to ditch Excel as your employee onboarding software
• Overcoming Excel onboarding limitations with a workflow management solution

Let’s jump to it!
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Do you have a brand that you go back to, time and time again?

If you do, what is it about this brand that’s captured your loyalty?

I do not doubt that an exceptional customer experience plays its part. That is, think about how that brand makes you feel. Good huh?

According to Bain & Company, businesses that invest time and effort to optimize their customer experience (CX) flows, experience above-market revenue growth between 4-8%. With the vast choice of products, services and brands available, exceptional customer experience comes as the ultimate seduction and differentiation for businesses to stand out above competitors.

In this Process Street article, you’ll learn how to engage your customers at every point in their journey with you. You’ll learn how to consistently create a service with a smile, a product to praise, and a beloved brand.

Learn from the best as we take a glimpse into the CX operations used by the likes of Netflix, Microsoft, and of course Process Street. You’ll then be given 5 tips on how you can optimize your CX flows, taking into account the changing business landscape, and the impacts of digitalization on customer behavior and experience.

Click on the relevant subheader to jump to your section of choice. Alternatively, scroll down to read all for an in-depth understanding of CX.

• What is CX?
• Case studies: How top tech companies deliver excellent CX
• How to optimize your customer experience flows
• Using checklists to optimize your CX flows in 5 steps
• Understanding customer experience flows in a digital world

Let’s jump to it!
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This is a guest post by Michael Zipursky, CEO of Consulting Success® and Coach to Consultants. He has advised organizations like Financial Times, Dow Jones, RBC, and helped Panasonic launch new products into global markets. Michael is also the author of the Amazon Best Sellers ACT NOW: How successful consultants thrive during chaos and uncertainty, The Elite Consulting Mind and Consulting Success® the book.

You know the feeling; you’d love to take a vacation and a break from your business…

…but there’s no one to handle the day-to-day operations for you.

You’ve built up years of experience, and you feel like you’re the only one who can run the show. I know, because I’ve been there. Early on in my career, I was convinced I could do everything.

I told myself I was better than anyone at the work I did. It would take me too long to train anyone up to my level. I persuaded myself that this was true…but I was wrong. I could have certainly taught someone else – and it would have saved me a lot of time and energy to focus on higher-value work.

Studies indicate that business system documentation can boost productivity and save up to 6,000 hours per year, equating to 2.4 full-time staff positions.

On top of this, documenting systems and processes builds a foundation to train new team members so that your business can run without you involved in the day-to-day operations.

By the end of this Process Street article, you’ll understand why it’s so important to document systems and processes, see some real-life examples and learn how to do it in your business.

• Business system documentation: What it is and why it is important
• Document your most common business systems
• Documenting systems for clients: Network Reactivation Campaign example
• Frequently asked questions about business systems development
• Using Process Street and process documentation for business system development

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“Knowledge has to be improved, challenged, and increased constantly, or it vanishes.” – Peter Drucker

Lean management, Six Sigma, and lean Six Sigma all walk into a bar. Lean management orders a Scotch. Six Sigma orders bourbon. Then lean Six Sigma orders a hot toddy. The bartender says, “So that’ll be a whisky, a whiskey, and a bit of both.”

Are you seriously writing another post about lean Six Sigma?

Yes. Yes, I am.

While you’d be forgiven for thinking that these methodologies are all essentially the same, it is important to remember that they are, indeed, separate. The principle of lean Six Sigma is simple: it combines the waste reduction and workflow efficiency of lean manufacturing with the defect-elimination process of Six Sigma.

To break it down:

• Lean: A method to reduce or eliminate any activity that doesn’t add value to a process (read more)
• Six Sigma: A system to create a defect-free process (read more)
• Lean Six Sigma: The best of both worlds used to eliminate process waste and variation (read more)

Some may say Six Sigma is outdated, or just another example of “business bullshit,” Process Street keeps lauding the benefits for one simple reason: lean Six Sigma works.

From Motorola to Amazon, Fortune 500s have been incorporating Six Sigma practices since the mid-80s. In the early 2000s, Dell, Inc. did the same and by 2004 had saved the company $1.5 billion in costs. In 2020, Dell Technologies reported total revenue of $92 billion and as well as the increasing popularity of their systems.

In this post, I’ll break down Lean Six Sigma into the five corresponding DMAIC process categories, and provide the most relevant tools for each stage. Feel free to jump ahead:

• Six Sigma tools: Define
• Six Sigma tools: Measure
• Six Sigma tools: Analyze
• Six Sigma tools: Implement
• Six Sigma tools: Control
• Final thoughts & further reading

Otherwise, dear reader, let’s begin!
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From sprints to cycles, and from product backlogs to …well…no backlog at all. These are just a couple of examples of the differences between Shape Up and agile approaches such as Scrum.

But, what exactly is Shape Up? How does it, when put into practice, differ from Scrum?

Our development team here at Process Street recently made the move from Scrum to Shape Up and I asked them how the two compare. This post outlines the key takeaways from the team and takes a closer look at what Shape Up is as a whole.

To jump to a specific section, click the appropriate link below:

• A re-cap on the Scrum workflow
• What is Shape Up?
• How does Shape Up work?
• Scrum vs Shape Up
• Shape Up at Process Street
• Key takeaways: From Scrum to Shape Up

Alternatively, to read the whole post – just keep on scrolling.
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I have a riddle for you:

What has four sides, often goes missing, comes from trees, and can be expensive to reproduce?

I’ll give you a hint.

It wastes up to 40% of on-the-job time, and about $120 billion per year in the US alone.

Need another?

Around 7.5% of them will be lost or misplaced each year (about one lost every 12 seconds), and for each that gets lost you’re looking at a loss of between $350 to $700 in employee time.

Did you get it yet?

Condescending sarcasm aside, I am of course talking about paper forms. But this article isn’t about paper forms, per se; it’s about how you can get rid of paper forms in your business with form automation software.

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