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Feeling unorganized and stressed? Have no fear, processes are here! Here are some simple systems and ideas for you to put into place in your work and life. The more processes you have, the less you will need to think about what needs to happen. Processes reduce stress and we all need that, right?
The Benefits
Processes help create peace and calmness. They also help create a better environment at work and at home. The more processes you implement for your own life, your personal life and your family, the happier you and everyone around you will be.
“If you can’t describe what you’re doing as a process, you don’t know what you’re doing.” -W. Edwards Deming
Processes at Work
Symptoms of Broken Processes: Customers are unhappy. Managers place blame on employees for customers being unhappy. Things take way too long. Employees report high frustration. Processes aren’t measured or controlled. Data redundancy is common. No one manages the total process.
Have you ever heard a manager say that they are having problems with an employee and that they want to transfer or fire that employee to improve the situation? That manager probably doesn’t realize that 85% of problems within organizations are with processes, control mechanisms and structure and only 15% of problems are with people. Usually, people are blamed instead of the process which leads to the very root cause of the problem never getting fixed.
Managers often have a hard time making this shift in thinking that the root cause of most problems is in the process itself. When managers are able to focus on the process, blame immediately goes away along with a decrease in tension and an increase in quality. If managers can stop blaming and start improving processes and systems, their work environment will become more enjoyable for the entire team.
5 Processes To Implement At Work
1. Career development process check-in with your manager or team to make sure everyone is on track with their career goals.
2. Start your workday process to help you get set up for a great day.
3. Close down your workday to wrap up remaining items and prepare yourself for the next day.
4. Tracking and monitoring your daily goals to make sure you are completing what you need to do. For instance, tracking sales and revenue or how many people signed up for your email list per day. You need a process for all of these items to monitor if you systems are working or not and implement changes if needed.
5. Process for networking and building relationships within and outside of your company.
People support what they help create. If people are involved in making improvements, they will try harder to make things work better. Those with the best ideas on how to fix broken processes are those currently doing the job. By having a say in what happens, employees will support change instead of resisting change.
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Processes At Home
Same at home, if your husband or kids are involved in putting the menu together for the week then they are much more willing to help make meals. (I use this one on my husband frequently, it works great:)
Symptoms of Broken Processes: No one is happy. It takes way too long to get dressed and out the door in the morning. You always forget something and have to go back in again. There is no control or measurement to make you actually clean up. No matter what we do “inventory” just keeps piling up. You buy ranch dressing at the store when you already have an unopened bottle in the fridge. You think your husband is doing the laundry and he thinks you are doing the laundry. Laundry never gets done.
Instead of placing blame on a child or husband for a disorganized room or not making dinner on time, why not institute a process in your home to help manage how things should be done?
For instance, every night 6pm, my husband and I have a routine to start picking up the house and putting my daughter’s pajamas on. By 6:30, we are reading and getting her ready for bed and by 7pm she is fast asleep. When we did not have that process in place, we would be trying to finish up work until 7pm, the house would be a a mess, my daughter would stay up all night and we’d be trying to clean the house at 10pm at night (or not cleaning it is more like it!).
5 Processes To Implement at Home
1. A morning routine process the second you wake up.
2. A nighttime routine process to help you wind down and go to bed. This process will also prepare you for a good night’s sleep and a good morning the next day.
3. An eating process so you know what you are eating and when. This also ensures you eat healthy and that you don’t eat junk because you aren’t rushed.
4. If you have children, you need a childcare process to help you communicate what needs to happen and when. This could be a process that helps them get out the door in the morning or a process that reminds them of the items they need to do before they can have playtime.
5. A daily cleaning process so you don’t spend all of your precious weekend cleaning up since you didn’t clean up during the workweek. If you do a little bit each day, it’s not a “chore” later on when you really don’t feel like cleaning up.
What processes are you going to implement today?
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