I have a question for you.

What does a Formula 1 racing team, like Ferrari, have in common with a high-flying company, like Apple?

They’re both in highly competitive industries? They’re both focused on improving their performance? They’re both incredibly driven to succeed? They’re both intent on being the best in the world?

Yes, yes, yes, and yes.

In other words, they both strive, in everything they do, to achieve Operational Excellence (Op Ex). However, achieving Operational Excellence is far from easy, and (fortunately for Apple and Ferrari) only 36% of companies manage it.

So, buckle up and join this Process Street post, as we race through the following topics and learn, from the likes of Ferrari, Apple, Disney, and Google, how to become operationally excellent:

• What Operational Excellence is (& what it isn’t)
• The four key creators of Operational Excellence
• 10 ways to achieve Operational Excellence
• The real reasons organizations fail to achieve Operational Excellence
• How to overcome Operational Excellence challenges

Ready to zoom into pole position? 🏎️💨

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Want to lose weight? Shape up? Get fitter? Gain muscle?

If you do, I have one thing to say to you:

“If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got” – Henry Ford

To get better, improve, and achieve your goals, something needs to change.

But this concept doesn’t only apply to people who want to lose weight, get fit, or become stronger.

It applies to businesses too; to keep improving, businesses need to keep changing.

Businesses can typically find between 50 to 75 improvement opportunities when they go through process analysis. This can result in anywhere from a 10% to an 80% reduction in costs.

Aha! Thought that might get your attention! Interested in finding out more?

This is what you’ll learn by reading this Process Street post on process analysis:

• What is process analysis?
• How Lego and IBM nearly collapsed without process analysis
• The 4 tell-tale signs that a process needs analysis
• How to do process analysis (and how to do it well)

Ready to take the first step towards new and improved processes?

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Click here to visually map and improve your business processes now!

Did you know that visual information is processed 60,000 x faster than text?

This explains why the average person remembers only 20% of what they read but 40% of what they see. This also explains why most companies use a form of visual management to communicate with their employees.

Let’s do a little test to see if people, in general, respond better to visual cues than text.

Look at these two depictions of a traffic light below.

One is a sentence describing a traffic light, and one is an image of a traffic light. Both traffic lights are on different colors:

1. The traffic light is on red.

2.

At the end of this Process Street post, we’ll see which color traffic light you remember! No cheating mind!

In the meantime, I’ll take you through the following topics to explain what visual management is and how you can use it to effectively communicate with your employees:

• What is visual management?
• Why use visual management?
• The 3 golden rules of visual management
• Implementing visual management with Process Street

Ready?
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In the fast-paced, full-throttle world of modern business, there’s an incentive to keep going, keep doing, keep pressing forward.

(Business. More like busyness, amirite? 😏)

But what if I told you that striving forward without robust, solid processes is a massive mistake?

While Łukasz Tartanus found from his sample that 69% of businesses have documented processes, only 4% manage and measure them. This means countless businesses are zealously pressing forward with depreciated, outdated processes for their recurring tasks. If only their processes were optimized, these businesses would be able to grow and achieve internal targets far quicker.

This is why business process optimization is important. And it’s why you’re about to read my post on it.

I’ll define business process optimization, its benefits, explain how to go about it, and show you how Process Street makes process optimization super easy.

Just read through the following sections to get clued up:

• What’s the business process optimization definition?
• Is business process optimization right for you?
• Example of an optimized process
• How to optimize your business processes (with Process Street’s template)
• Use Process Street – and its automation features – for true optimization!

It’s time to learn about optimization! 🚀

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Understanding quality and seeking to improve it is arguably the core purpose behind undertaking process improvements.

But where did this philosophy of process improvement come from?

One key person is William Edwards Deming – sometimes referred to as Edward W. Deming. He’s principally a statistician, but one could even call him a philosopher of science.

Deming’s goal was to reapply the scientific method to business processes, and has left us with two main variants of his thinking: PDSA and PDCA.

In this article we’ll outline:

• What the Deming cycle is, with its history
• How to apply the Deming cycle to improve your business processes
• The important distinction between PDSA and PDCA
• How PDSA is employed in the medical field

Deming’s approach is not just about improving processes, but about improving a whole business.

In a recent meta-study from the British Medical Journal, researchers found only 2 out of 73 studies had applied PDSA in a way which fully met criteria. Commenting:

To progress the development of the science of improvement, a greater understanding of the use of improvement methods, including PDSA, is essential to draw reliable conclusions about their effectiveness.

And that’s why we’re writing this article!

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Do you know what SIPOC stands for?

Go on, have a guess…

To clarify, SIPOC is an acronym for Suppliers, Inputs, Processes, Outputs, and Customers.

The SIPOC methodology acts as a tool to identify the inputs and outputs of target business processes, to determine the process owner, customers, suppliers, and to establish clear boundaries for the process.

Numerous case studies have shown the utilization of SIPOC to give substantial process improvements. For this reason, we at Process Street present you with this ultimate SIPOC guide, explaining the what, why, and how of SIPOC, with free templates to help 👊you👌 get started.

Click on the relevant subheaders below to jump to that section, alternatively scroll down to read all we at Process Street have to say regarding SIPOC.

• What is SIPOC?
• SIPOC Template
• The benefits of implementing SIPOC methodology
• Creating a SIPOC diagram with our SIPOC Template
• SIPOC example

Alternatively, if you want to skip all of the info and get straight to the free SIPOC Template, you can check it out below.

Let’s get started!
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Knowing how to write a procedure is a key skill for anyone looking to build a successful business. Procedures are vital to consistent success for many of the same reasons that processes are important – they let you reliably repeat your successes, isolate and correct your mistakes, and create a business model that lets you scale your operations.

If you don’t know how to write a procedure then you’re dead in the water. Get it right, and the resulting efficiency boosts can put you on track to eclipse your competitors.

This Process Street post will cover the following topics to help you write effective procedures:

• What is a procedure?
• Why are procedures important?
• Preparing to write your procedures
• How to write an effective procedure
• How to write an effective procedure

Read on to learn the 13 steps to writing your business’ procedures effectively, in a way that they will actually be followed instead of getting read once and then forgotten.

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“The biggest room in the world is the room for improvement” – Helmut Schmidt

Only 4% of businesses measure and manage their processes.

Why, when doing so provides an avenue for continuous improvement, advancement, and business success?

At Process Street, documenting our processes means we can continuously assess what is working and what is not.

For instance, when I first began as a Content Writer, I found navigating HTML code difficult. Luckily for me, at Process Street we document all of our business processes, creating full transparency over what works and what doesn’t. In this sense, a stronger HTML focus was needed during training. The required changes were made, and our training processes improved.

In this article, you will find out how you can do the same. You will learn how to:

• Identify opportunities for process improvements.
• Implement the changes required.
• Measure the success of the changes made.

Think of this article as your ultimate toolkit, to make continuous process improvements in your business. We provide you with 17 free templates, to support you in improving your processes. Click on the links below to jump to the relevant template.

• Business Requirements Template
• SIPOC Template
• SWOT Analysis Template
• FMEA Template: Failure Mode and Effects Analysis
• Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) Template
• SOAP Note Template
• HACCP Process checklist
• HAZOP Process checklist
• Lewin’s Change Management Model
• Bridges Transition Model Process Checklist
• ADKAR Model Change Management Process Checklist
• McKinsey 7-S Model Process Checklist
• Kotter’s Change Management Model Checklist
• Kubler Ross Change Curve Change Management Model
• Nudge Theory Change Management Model Process
• PDCA Change Management Model Process Checklist
• Satir Change Management Model Process Checklist

Or, if you just can’t wait, check out the first of our templates below to see what we’ll be giving you!

We begin this article by explaining exactly what we mean by the term process improvement, and identifying the three steps you should follow to effectively improve processes in your business. The templates provided above have been carefully designed to assist you with each step.

Click on the relevant subheader below to jump to the appropriate section, alternatively scroll down to read all we have to say.

• What do we mean by the term process improvement?
• Process improvements, step 1: Identifying business opportunities for improvement
• Using process documentation as a business opportunity
• Process improvements, step 2: Implementing changes
• Process improvements, step 3: Measuring the impact of change

Let’s get started!
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What caused the global financial crash in 2008?

Failures of AIG, Lehman, Merrill, and other major financial firms? Disproportionate risk-taking by banks and lenders? Deregulation within the financial industry? Development of new ways to finance mortgage products? Excessive lending and borrowing in the housing market?

Yes, yes, yes, yes, and yes.

However, these causes only tell half the story behind the financial meltdown that morphed into the biggest global recession since the Great Depression (Covid-19 aside).

What was the root cause? The real reason behind the enormous cost to the economies of many countries and the lost fortunes of millions of families?

A lack of total quality management (TQM).

Paul Moore, former head of group regulatory risk at HBOS (part of the Lloyds Banking Group since 2009), dubbed this crisis as ‘the biggest quality failure of all time.’

Total quality management stems from the belief that mistakes can be avoided if everyone is behind the continual process of detecting, reducing, and eliminating errors.

If organizations from within the financial sector believed in putting quality first, and positioned culture and people above profit margins and structure, the events leading up to the crisis could have been avoided.

Just imagine how different things might have been had the financial sector been managing their quality in a similar way to ISO 9001!

We’ll continue to explore this concept later but, before we do, let’s look at what else we’ll cover in this Process Street post:

• What is total quality management (TQM)?
• Total quality management’s 5 core principles
• TQM’s benefits (& how it might’ve stopped the financial crisis)
• Create and use a TQM framework with Process Street!

Let’s get going!

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You’ve heard of the moonwalk. But have you heard of the Gemba Walk?

From a business standpoint, the Gemba Walk is infinitely more useful (though the moonwalk is pretty cool).

Specifically, the Gemba Walk allows businesses to continuously improve how they do things by remedying their processes, procedures, and workflows for recurring tasks. The continual process improvements that Gemba Walking brings helps businesses exponentially – 1 in 4 improvements save time, and 1 in 10 improvements save money.

And this is all achieved by simply stepping back, rather than blindly pushing forward.

Want to know more?

I thought so.

In this post, I’ll tell you what Gemba Walk means, the origins of it, its benefits, and how Process Street can help both remote and physical businesses do the Gemba Walk.

Just read through the following sections to get clued up:

• What is a Gemba Walk?
• The origin of Gemba Walks
• The 3 elements of a Gemba Walk
• The benefits of Gemba Walks (& lean management)
• Undergoing process improvement with Process Street!

Now, let’s sprint through the rest of the post! 🏃‍♂️

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