The eight most dangerous words in the business language are, “Because that’s the way we’ve always done it.” This is especially true when a company is growing, and old processes no longer work in a business that needs to scale. To accommodate growth, companies can hire more people, invest in equipment or technology, OR innovate processes. Most of the time, a combination of the three options make sound business sense. Today, let’s focus on innovating processes.
Don’t let growth suck the AIR of the room
The AIR Model (Assess, Innovate, Repeat) is not for sustaining breath –it is for team building and breathing new life into your company.
Assess: Doing the same thing again and again is sometimes called consistency, which can be a good thing. It can also be called falling into a rut, which is not so good; especially if your company is growing and maintaining both profitability and your employee’s sanity is important. To ascertain if old processes no longer serve your company’s needs AND to increase team effectiveness, deliberately build cross functional training into each calendar quarter. The team benefits when employees can effectively fill multiple positions on the team. Equip the trainee with a series of questions to ask that will uncover why certain processes exist.
Innovate: One of the major benefits of deliberate cross functional training is that the process of asking questions about “why things are done the way they are done” usually identifies areas for improvement. After a list of opportunities are written down, empower both the trainer and trainee to recommend how to improve processes, reduce redundancies, save time and money, etc.
Repeat: Successfully implementing each process improvement is like a baseball team scoring a run. Putting runs on the scoreboard feels a lot like winning! Keep track of the score, celebrate each small win and create a culture where consistently asking good questions is rewarded because the resulting innovation breathes new life into the way your company gets work done. In doing so, the team increases its collective resiliency and effectiveness.