Ep 116: How do you make your business processes run like clockwork? With Trent Dyrsmid

Understanding the Difference Between Business Processes and Project Management

When choosing automation tools and work dashboards, keep in mind that parts of the business can be replicated. This is known as process management. On the other hand, project management is a long-term endeavor aimed at improving business performance. Separating these two is crucial for creating seamless workflows. As a CEO, it will be good to make it your goal to delegate these routine tasks to others and to spend less time teaching the SOPs to the rest of the team.

There’s a difference between process management and project management, which I should explain because it’s not immediately obvious to newer founders. So, a process is a repetitive thing that, you know, the steps in advance, and you’re going to do it over and over. Prospecting is a process. Uploading a video to YouTube is a process. Making a post on social media is a process. Keyword research is a process. Generating a backlink is the process of publishing a podcast episode. There’s a gazillion thing. You just do them over and over and over, so Flowster is built to solve that problem to give you a platform. For your process management. Now, what a project management project is, it’s different. It’s about, “I want to make some improvement in my business”.

Tip # 1: List down all of your business processes and SOPs

To begin removing the legwork from your day-to-day, document all of your linear processes first. Then, create a video or guide that explains these steps and integrates them into your onboarding process. Flowster allows you to document the process step-by-step, and they’ll be introducing a video function by March that will allow you to capture all the movement on the screen through video.

How do you make an SOP? First of all—two things, number one, how do you know what you should make an SOP for so you can delegate it? And then how do you do that? So let’s deal with those in that order. Think of any type of task that doesn’t require the judgment that comes from years of experience in the field. And there are lots and lots of things that apply to that. Those are the low-hanging fruit to turn into an SOP. There’s a lot of judgment that’s required, and especially judgment that comes from years of experience. So start with what I call the linear processes or the binary processes.

Tip # 2: Promote accountability and responsibility

It’s equally important to get everybody on board for any movement on the tasks to promote responsibility and accountability. Giving a detailed brief is one thing, but setting deadlines and reminding everyone make sure that the team is on the same page. Moving deadlines can’t be avoided, especially if there are dependencies on the tasks in the process. But, it’s important to have checkpoints to track progress.

Make sure that not only do you have clearly detailed instructions on how to do all this stuff. But also, the software will make sure that everybody is notified that there’s a new episode and there are due dates, and they got to get such and such done by such and such date. And if you want your processes to flow smoothly, of course, you need all that accountability. That’s what the Flowster software is designed to do. It’s meant to give you the ability to assign tasks to people to give them due dates and get alerts when things are past due or approaching the due date or what have you.

Tip # 3: Lessen meetings, use change management workflows

Eliminate unnecessary meetings for yourself and your team. Align everybody by communicating and applying these changes to the rest of the workflow. It is a feature Flowster provides. Making sure the whole workflow is updated the moment tasks change helps everyone get on board without having to meet.

You have six active workflows. That our team is working their way through that is based on this template. You’ve just changed the template. Would you like me to update all the workflows as well? And the answer 99% of the time is going to be yes. So, what have I accomplished? I’ve accomplished something very significant. It’s called change management, and it’s painless. I didn’t have to have a meeting. And if your employees are spread around different times zones having a meeting’s a pain in the ass. I didn’t have to make a zoom video or anything.