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Are you dealing with demanding clients?
If yes, your client onboarding process is most likely broken (or non-existent).
If you have a high team turnover, your new hire onboarding or project management process might be ineffective.
You can almost always trace the root cause of a problem back to a broken process.
Here is where the super exciting topic of workflows comes in.
In all seriousness, what’s not exciting is chasing after demanding clients or dealing with high team turnover.
The right workflows can help address these issues effectively.
So let me share how I’ve built business workflows for my clients in minutes.
In addition to my snazzy step-by-step approach below (only 3 steps), you will find out:
- The right person to build workflows in your business
- The one core business process to put in a workflow first
- How to keep your workflows simple
- Why creating process maps is a huge waste of your time
- Why screenshots and videos could be both helpful and harmful
Let’s dive in.
1. Get the right person to build your business workflows
If you are the business owner and you plan to build your workflows, you might as well fire yourself from your micromanaging seat.
Don’t mean to be harsh, but you are not the right person to be doing this work.
As the owner, you should operate like one and stop working in intern-mode documenting your own workflows.
Most business owners are strategic thinkers and visionaries, not process nerds.
And even if you are one, your time is better spent growing your business. Not documenting processes in a software.
So, who should build your workflows?
Some folks would tell you it should be each team member implementing their workflows.
The problem with this approach is that most people would resist doing this heavy lifting.
Let’s face it, building workflows does not sound appealing (unless you are a process nerd like me). Some of your team members may not be process-oriented, and they are all busy delivering their work.
To avoid dealing with resistance, it’s best to get your in-house process nerd of sorts (or hire one) to oversee this effort.
You are not only avoiding resistance but also protecting your teams’ valuable time.
You help build consistent workflows because they will be captured by one process-driven person rather than multiple people with multiple styles.
Here is a simple framework for capturing processes into workflows:
- Process nerd will interview/shadow your best team members’ work and capture it on a high-level from A to Z
- Each team member will use the captured workflow next time they implement the process and give feedback for improvement
This way you don’t involve everyone on your team in creating workflows - you protect their time to do the work they are best at.
At the same time, their minimal involvement is helpful. They are being “interviewed” for each step without doing the documenting. After all, they know best how the work is done. They are asked for feedback once the workflows are created.
You avoid team resistance by building your workflows this way. The minimal involvement in documenting workflows protects your team’s time. Getting their input with feedback gets their buy-in.
People appreciate providing input while having their time protected.
Your process nerd can spend 10-15 min per workflow regardless of its complexity.
Remember, the initial effort is to keep it high-level and simple.
They will have the opportunity to revisit each workflow for continuous improvements.
Then they can expand the workflow into more detail, if necessary.
Your Process nerd can oversee building all your workflows.
Getting the right person to build your business workflows is your end goal for step one.
2. Keep it simple - one workflow at a time, 4 workflow elements only
Two of the most common challenges my clients face at a point of growth are that they have to serve more clients while managing a growing team.
As a small online business that is growing, your focus should be to deliver an amazing service to your growing number of clients without working your tail off.
The same would go for managing your growing team without feeling as if you were spinning plates managing projects all day.
Having simple and clear workflows to capture how you do things from A to Z will help you deliver your service consistently while growing a team of top performers.
To build simple workflows, first start simple with your workflow building effort:
- Identify your one CORE business process driving your business on the most high-level
Here is what I mean by that. Every business offers a CORE service (or product) to a CORE client (the one that brings 80% or the majority of the revenue). To do this, every business:
- Attracts potential clients (Marketing process)
- Enrolls them into their service (Sales process)
- Bills them for service (Financials/Invoicing process)
- Delivers service/promise to them (Onboarding and Client Delivery process)
- Offboards them (Offboarding process)
While doing the above, your business attracts, onboards, hires and manages a team. In other words, your HR process.
When you put the above processes together on the most high-level, they constitute your one CORE business process - the ONE driving your entire business.
Build your first workflow around your one core business process as described above. You can elaborate and get into the details later on.
Starting simple with your workflow effort will help you see the big picture of your business without overwhelming yourself with multiple workflows.
Don’t worry, as you do continuous improvements, you will add more workflows and more details to each of them, as needed.
For now, let’s face it - you have limited time and a bigger fish to fry.
This is why it helps to start your workflow building simple by beginning with your one CORE business process.
In addition to keeping your workflow building effort simple, you should keep each of your workflows simple as well.
There are only 4 elements a workflow needs:
- A clear title of the process it represents (i.e. Client Onboarding)
- An optional brief description of what the workflow describes and what’s the end goal of implementing it
- Your tasks from A to Z - keep this simple and high-level in the beginning
- A reference section with references to relevant resources
That’s it. Remove the bells and whistles in your workflows.
Here is what I mean by this.
- Process Maps
Most folks out there will advise you to create process maps for your initial workflows.
I used to make this mistake myself. It would take me hours to edit process maps on LucidChart.
As I think back, this was super inefficient and idiotic.
Creating process maps only adds more time in this initial effort.
Every time you improve your workflows, you will also have to edit process maps again.
This is time-consuming both short- and long-term and needless for a small business.
You are not a big corporation. You don’t need the boring process maps at this point of growth when your priority is delighting clients and building a team of top performers.
Other elements that may complicate your workflows long-term:
- Screenshots and videos
Screenshots and videos could be both helpful and harmful.
Screenshots are helpful for step-by-step instructions. Same goes for videos.
Adding screenshots can be useful short-term but be mindful if you know your processes will change long-term.
As you improve your workflows on an ongoing basis or switch tools, there are steps that will most likely change.
Whomever is in charge of editing your workflows will have to remember (and take the time) to update all the screenshots or re-do the videos. Be mindful of this.
This could be a bit problematic long-term.
In summary, put your one CORE business process in a workflow first and remove all the bells and whistles of building your workflow.
By focusing on ONE core workflow and removing additional elements from it, you are focusing on simplicity. That’s your end goal with step two - One workflow, 4 simple elements to build it.
Later on you can repeat this with all other workflows - build one workflow at a time, 4 simple elements for each workflow.
3. Implement automations for repeatable, low-value tasks
This is straightforward - you can automate repeatable, low-value tasks by using Zapier.
Your end goal with automations is to save time and avoid errors.
In Summary:
1. Get the right person to build your business workflows
2. Keep it simple - one workflow at a time, 4 elements only
3. Implement automations for repeatable, low-value tasks
That’s it.
What workflows have you built in your business?