What’s Your Wonderful Workflow? (and Congratulations!)
Congratulations!
Congratulations to Catherine from Phoenix, Arizona! She was randomly selected as the winner of our Winter Ideas Contest. For commenting on what she is focusing on during this season, she wins complimentary copies of The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss and Getting Things Done by David Allen.
To see her ideas as well as others, click here.
Workflow Mapping
Is your workflow documented? Or does everyone just wing it? Without a documented “way we do things,” your company systems will not live up to their potential.
A workflow map shows the start to finish of a process. Creating a workflow map is useful for documenting your business processes in an easy to follow format.
A workflow map does a few things for you:
1. Provides instant direction for anyone beginning a new task.
2. Serves as a checklist to ensure that every necessary step happens every time.
3. Reveals weaknesses or gaps in your workflow.
To create a workflow map, take a business process and work your way from start to finish documenting every step. Pay particular attention to points in the process where the next step has multiple options. For example:
While we’ve been buried in snow here in Maryland, we’ve been working on some of our processes for CLIP Lawn Care.
To inspire and provide you with workflow map examples, here are two maps we created this week. Click on the link below each item to open the larger map. Once the image is open, click on the screen to zoom if necessary.
1. What to do if we receive a signed contract.
2. What to do with a new customer.
To do this, we used XMind mind mapping software. You can use whatever you like to create a workflow map: a whiteboard, large paper, drawing software, mind mapping software, Microsoft Word, or any other tool you find helpful.
Application Action: I encourage you to take some time this month to go through some of your processes in this manner. I think you will be happy with the results. If you come up with a map that you want to implement in your company, send it to me and I would be happy to give you feedback.
Bonus: Our front doorway, hours before the storm was even over: Click here for image.
