Early Spring Cleaning

Like spring cleaning, I think most companies would be better off with periodic reviews of processes and procedures to clean out the "gunk", re-evaluating what's critical, figuring out what information is necessary (what's not) and the shortest distance that information needs to travel. Essentially, starting with a blank page figuring out what the "ideal" is for each of the major players, and figuring out how the current system measures up. For us, the starting point is understanding the value we offer to our clients and trying to design processes to reinforce and add to that value.

Our growth has meant that we have always been focusing on that one emergency - battling one fire after another. To move to the next level it's pretty clear what we need to do and yet - between finding the time and motivation to do it, it can be a struggle. To some, this could is the ideal - we're almost starting from scratch. Where other companies need to unlearn bad habits but the move towards the formalization of processes does not seem any easier.