A lot of business owners assume that all business processes will eventually become hopelessly complex and that there’s not much you can do about it. They seem to think that the increased complexity of their business is a sign of growth, and is therefore a good thing despite being an inconvenience. But if your business processes are too complex, then that can hamper productivity in some big ways.
Some call these sorts of business processes ‘dysfunctional processes’, and that’s definitely a good way of describing them! We’re going to look at some of the key signs of a business becoming too complex, the problems it can cause, and how you can go about making things much simpler. Don’t assume that things have to be convoluted in order to keep a strong business running!
Too many emails
A lot of office workers have to deal with well over twenty to thirty emails per day. It’s a common problem in offices, but it’s often seen as a natural part of the territory. But you need to take a look at why so many emails are necessary in your process. After all, we act like dealing with email is really quick, but in reality it’s a huge timesink. It also distracts people from their project tasks in big ways.
If people are spending more than maybe half an hour a day on work emails, something needs to change. Consider having standups at the beginning of the day and an improved project management system.
The Cynefin framework (Wikipedia)
Web development headaches
Businesses need websites, whether they’re running an online store or simply need it to act as a marketing tool. Whatever the case, you need to keep it frequently updated with fresh content and to monitor its stability. In order to do this, you need to make sure the processes for doing so are kept simple. A convoluted back-end will make your website much harder to develop and maintain. This is especially important if you’re running an online store.
Make sure you use a simple but powerful hosting solution for your website. Even if you’re running something as simple as a blog, you need to ensure the content management system isn’t slow and difficult to use. Just because you’ve got a bunch of tech wizards working for you who can take the long and code-heavy way round, it doesn’t mean you have to let them do it!
Jumbled projects
How many wires are getting crossed during your project cycles? So many business owners just sit there and accept that projects are going to be messy beasts and make little effort to ensure that everyone is communicating properly and on the same page.
It’s important that your team members are aware of what the other team members are doing and how it affects their own work, but this can often take a lot of time. It’s usually dealt with in overlong and complicated meetings – and no-one likes those. Consider using a simplified project management platform. There are drag-and-drop task solutions out there that make the entire project easy to track at a glance.