Improving the performance of the company or department, is one of the key objectives of any manager. In fact, it should be the No.1 objective because it is only through continuous improvement that we can secure business continuity. Last year’s performance is no longer good enough to secure this year’s success.

1. So how do we go about it? As a starting point most managers would look for processes they can improve and areas where they could become more productive and more efficient. Perhaps though, there is a question we need to pose first and that is “are we doing the right things?” Re-asses the role of your department in relation to in relation to Company Strategy.

Identify the main purpose of your department and list the deliverables it has to deliver on, in order for your department to contribute to achieving Corporate Strategy. Everything should be tied to organisational goals. If a process or activity does not contribute to achieving a strategic goal, drop it!!! Its wasting effort and resources.

2. Once you have identified the role of your department and what it has to deliver on, identify the processes that produce those deliverables. Here, you may get a few surprises. You may find that you are missing some processes; create them. Or, you may find you are implementing processes that do not contribute any value; scrap them.

3. Now you are ready to start looking at opportunities to become more productive & effective. Take each process and map it out,  in other words create a flowchart for each process showing the main steps and their resource requirements (time, systems, personnel & money). This is called “Process Mapping”. What you have in front of you now is a breakdown of all your important processes. The process map will highlight which steps of the process have high durations or cost or need a high population of personnel to be executed. These are the ones to focus on. Can you shorten the long ones? Can you pull some cost out of the high cost ones?

What I have described above, is just one of the tools that are available for improving your area’s performance. Join me on our Improving Business Performance programme on October 22-23 to go through the tools in much greater detail and reap the benefits. For more details please click here