If you’re like most small business owners, your typical day is spent delivering the services that make money for your company, fighting fires, answering emails, trying to make it through your “to do” list, and then mindlessly scrolling through social media reading updates when your tired mind turns to mush at the end of the day. You know you should think about your growth plan. You know you should take a close look at your numbers to make sure that your energy is being invested in the right places. You know that you could probably be more efficient, if only you had the time to stand back and look at your business with a critical eye. But the phone is ringing again, or a client needs you or whatever the next emergency is you need to deal with.
Sound familiar? But have no fear, there is a better way! That better way starts by looking at your business processes with a critical eye. One of the tools I like to use to do so is the swimlane diagram. Just as it sounds, the diagram looks like the horizontal lanes of a swimming pool. Picture a bunch of sideways stacked bars, each one for a role within your company, including yours. Even if you fly solo, you’ll still have a lane for clients, suppliers, as well as technology. In complex processes, you may have a lane for each software tool you use.
You’ll need to think about how to break your business down into processes, and in particular, focus on the ones that may not run as smoothly as you’d like. In general, you’ll have sales processes, management processes, and operational processes. Some examples of processes to map out include new client onboarding, delivery of specific types of projects or services, invoicing, and employee performance reviews. You can really flowchart any process in your business so begin with the ones you’d like to fix.
There are symbol conventions in flowcharting for process nerds, but honestly for most purposes, using a box for each step is fine. When you map your process, you’ll start with a box in the swimlane of whoever initiates the process, which could be your client. Then you’ll draw a box in the lane for whoever takes the next step and connect them. If that next person needs to enter something into a piece of software then drop a box into your technology lane, and so on.
Breaking down the detailed steps of what you do makes it easier to identify areas you can delegate or automate, and that is really the entire point of the exercise. The goal is to save you time in your business and make you more efficient while optimizing the experience of your end client.
Before you think this sounds like too much work, it can make for an interesting meeting to allow team members to brainstorm ways to improve. We recently did this for our client onboarding process. It helped consolidate some steps to make sure that everyone was on the same page regarding their role in the process, what needs to happen before they can take action, who they’re holding up if they procrastinate, and the specifics of what they need to do. Not only did it help our process but we now use that same swimlane diagram in our new team member training. We find that representing visually what everyone does in a process makes it easier for a newcomer to understand.
I have a mind for process so inefficiencies tend to jump out at me, (which is why going to the DMV typically drives me nuts), but you can do this for your own business as well. The format of the swimlane diagram is relatively simple, and you can either create it on a whiteboard, draw it on a piece of paper, or there are several online tools you can use to build them. My personal favorites are Lucidchart and Miro. Powerpoint works just fine as well. The key is to stand back and take a critical view of your processes to make sure that they are as simple as they can be, and that you move as many boxes out of your lane as possible.
And if you think you don’t have time to tackle this little project, remember the famous quote from Albert Einstein. “If I had 1 hour to save the world, I would spend 55 minutes defining the problem, and only 5 minutes finding the solution.”