Workflow using stickies

Most small companies act as a team rather than a machine. When a small business grows to a mid-sized business then workflow starts to become a serious issue.  Tasks will be naturally delegated and the business owner starts to become more detached from the everyday detail.  There is a danger point in losing control and inefficiencies can easily occur as it becomes more difficult to coordinate business processes.

If you can think of one process in your business that you particularly need to control and coordinate then it may be time to take the stickie test.  The stickie test is a keep it simple approach using small paper stickies.  As an example we will take the process of producing a report for a client.  On each stickie you need to put the step in the process and who is doing it.  In our example, we would have the following steps:

1.    Creating the report - Mr Creator
2.    Reviewing the report – Mrs Reviewer
3.    Second review of the report – Mr Signoff
4.    Delivering the report – Mr Signoff

We have defined the process steps and the order.  A quick look at the process and we can see there may well be some loops in the process where the work goes back to Mr Creator for amendments and changes.

You may well find your particular process is far more involved than our example, but just creating stickies as above will give a quick insight to improve a process and make it more efficient.

Comments

[Edwin]

Thanks for the tips on these great blogs.