Generate Business Impact

Net Promoter© Surveys

Required Materials:

To conduct Net Promoter® surveys, you will need to visit the Net Promoter System website. You will also need the Customer Journey Maps you just updated as well as the Customer Engagement SWOT Diagram completed in Module One of Business Impact Accelerator©.

To Do List:

There are six actions for you and your team to complete:

1. Visit the Net Promoter System website and review the section titled NPS and Growth.
2. Watch six short videos about the Net Promoter System®.
3. Create a Net Promoter® Survey (or update your current customer survey) and include the “recommend” and “why” questions.
4. Pilot this Net Promoter® Survey with a small group of customers.
5. Review feedback received from customers and close-the-loop with each one of these customers.
6. Review lessons learned and create a personalized engagement plan, including survey schedule, for each customer.

Coaching Tips:

In Customer Journey Maps, you and your team learned about the Net Promoter System® and question: “How likely would you be to recommend [Company X] to a friend or colleague?” In this section of Module 4, your business or social enterprise will put this question into action as you create and implement a Net Promoter© Survey.

First, let’s make sure you and your team have a common base of knowledge about the Net Promoter Score® and Net Promoter System®. Visit the Net Promoter System website and in the main navigation bar, look for About NPS and NPS and Growth. You’ll see this graphic from a study conducted by Bain (co-creator of Net Promoter® with Fred Reichheld and Satmetrix).

These are very compelling results, aren’t they? This website offers in-depth information about the Net Promoter System®, and we encourage you to sign-up for the Net Promoter System Podcast to hear first-hand accounts from enterprises achieving amazing results with this “outside-in” operating system.

After reviewing the Net Promoter System® website, schedule a meeting with your entire team to watch six short videos:

• “The Net Promoter System on a Napkin”
• “NPS Step 1: The Basics on the Net Promoter Score”
• “NPS Step 2: Know What Drives Your Net Promoter Score”
• “NPS Step 3: From the Top – Net Promoter Score Leadership”
• “NPS Step 4: Systemize Your Net Promoter Score Program”
• “NPS Step 5: Customer Engagement Required – Net Promoter Score”

Facilitate a discussion about the information presented in these videos. Be sure to revisit the work completed in Module 1 on Evaluating Customer Engagement. As Bill Lee reminds us in The Hidden Wealth of Customers: “you need to develop a customer engagement system to transform customers into loyal promoters and brand advocates who in fact, attract other loyal customers.” Examine the Customer Engagement SWOT Diagram from Module 1 to see if there are any quick improvements you can (or need) to make as a result of watching these videos.

Also, take a few minutes to review the wording of the Net Promoter® question (“how likely would you be to recommend [insert your company] to a friend or colleague?”). You may need to change the wording slightly for it to resonate with your customer base.

The Real Magic

The real magic behind the Net Promoter® question is the follow-up question: “Why did you give us this score?” The answer to this second question will help you and your team to (1) segment customers into three groups (promoters, passives, and detractors), and (2) learn how to rescue a relationship, turn passive customers into promoters, or discover ways to turn loyal promoters into brand advocates.

However, this only will happen if customers are honest about their experiences with your enterprise. Over the years, customers have been reinforced by companies–large and small–to not answer this question honestly or in many cases, to ignore it. The reason is straightforward. These customers are not provided any follow-up, not even an email outlining what the company has learned and how they are planning to use feedback to improve the experience or their products and/or services.

As a result, customers consciously or unconsciously realize their opinions do not count and become cynical about future surveys. So, it’s incumbent on you and your team to change this mindset by first seeking to understand what’s driving the Net Promoter Score and then taking action to correct service failures or reinforce loyalty. Not once in a while, but every single time you ask customers for feedback.

At its heart, Net Promoter® is really a question about relationship strength. As Fred Reichheld explained in his 2006 book, The Ultimate Question, it’s a question based on the Golden Rule: “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” In this book, Reichheld describes the “bad profits” earned by companies that extract excessive fees or impose onerous terms and conditions on their customers (for example, banks, airlines, cable providers, and hotels to name a few). Doesn’t this sound like the profit-driven banks, lenders, private equity investors, typical impact investment funds, and Wall Street investment firms and their conventional debt and equity financing models?

Another aspect of the Net Promoter System® many fail to understand is the need to take a census of all your customers on a regular basis (once or twice a year). The desired result is a 100% response rate, not a number that satisfies statistical tables. Here’s the point. Even if you get a survey response rate of 20% (which market researchers and statisticians would say is good), what is this result saying about the other 80% of customers who chose not to respond?

We recommend adding a key strategic measure on your One Page Strategy Map and Plan (introduced in the next Activity) to increase the Net Promoter® survey response rate to 80% or more. These are the survey response rates experienced by “loyalty leaders” like USAA, Apple, Costco, and Southwest Airlines (among others). Don’t follow the example of a publicly traded company we know that boasted in their annual report they had high customer engagement scores, when in reality they received just 4% of their online surveys back from customers.

Net Promoter® Is a System, Not Just a Score

We’ve been discussing surveys in this section of Module 4, but the real focus should be on creating a closed-loop feedback and operating system that embeds Net Promoter® into the day-to-day activities of your frontline teams. This means you must push down into your organization the responsibility for closing-the-loop with customers and improving their experiences. By doing this, you’ll align daily operations with your Sustainable 10X Impact Business Plan and strategic vision of the future.

As you create the Net Promoter© Survey and think through how to pilot with a small group of customers, realize you can ask more than the “recommend” and “why” questions (just don’t ask more than ten questions). And yes, you can ask the “satisfaction” question. You do need to know if customers are satisfied with the products, solutions, and service you provide. But as you read in the materials from Satmetrix, satisfaction is not enough to transform customers into passionate and loyal promoters. Be sure to use the same 0–10 point scale for all questions so you can continue segmenting your customer base into detractors, passives, and promoters.

Plan to pilot your initial Net Promoter® Survey with a small group of customers, preferably the earlyevangelists identified in Modules 1 and 2 of Business Impact Accelerator. Use a low-cost online survey tool like Google Forms in these early stages.

Ask one of your team members (or yourself) to be the points of contact for survey administration and to help troubleshoot any issues. They will also be the individual(s) to summarize survey responses and report back to the team. Be sure to respond to every piece of customer feedback (good or bad). In particular, if anyone scores a 6 or below on the survey, take immediate action as these are detractors who may be getting ready to “fire” your enterprise.

We advise closing-the-loop in-person to drill down into survey responses and listen to customers–in their own words–discuss the experiences they’ve had with your enterprise. This follow-up can be in-person, but it could also be via Skype or telephone. The important thing is to “close the loop” 100% of the time.

In a follow-up meeting after this first round of surveys, you and your team should review lessons learned and begin to design an operating system that works best for your enterprise. Plan to create customized engagement plans for each customer featuring regular touch-base sessions and short relationship or transactional surveys.

Remember, this is more than just an item on your to-do list. The Net Promoter® Survey is your key to building enduring relationships that translate into positive cash flow, profit, and sustainable impact.

Review Questions:

Before moving to the Next Step, ask these questions:

1. Did we keep our Net Promoter® Survey to less than ten questions?
2. Did we close the loop with 100% of our customers involved in this survey?
3. Did we create specific plans for improving the engagement level and experience of each customer?

Estimated Time:

It will take approximately 12–16 hours to conduct a pilot test of your Net Promoter® Survey, including the two-hour initial meeting with your team.

Featured Certified B Corporation:

Harper + Scott

Recommended Resources:

To learn more about improving customer loyalty and Net Promoter®, we suggest the following:

• The Ultimate Question: Driving Good Profits and True Growth by Fred Reichheld (especially Chapter 7 on Design Winning Customer Strategies).
• The Ultimate Question 2.0: How Net Promoter Companies Thrive in a Customer-Driven World by Fred Reichheld and Rob Markey.
• Answering the Ultimate Question: How Net Promoter Can Transform Your Business by Richard Owen and Laura Brooks, PhD.
• The Loyalty Effect: The Hidden Force Behind Growth, Profits, and Lasting Value by Fred Reichheld.
• Loyalty Rules: How Today’s Leaders Build Lasting Relationships by Fred Reichheld.
• The Experience Economy: Work is Theatre & Every Business a Stage by B. Joseph Pine II and James H. Gilmore.

To develop and manage surveys, we recommend:

• Google Forms (Google>Google Drive>My Drive>More>Forms)

Company Service Aptitude Test

Required Materials:

To complete the Company Service Aptitude Test©, you will need to visit the website of The DiJulius Group. You will also need the Change Accelerator© platform and toolkit.

To Do List:

There are five actions for you and your team to complete:

1. Learn about the ten commandments of world-class customer service as recommended by The DiJulius Group.
2. Complete the free online Company Service Aptitude Test (C-SAT).
3. Review C-SAT results and identify areas for improving the service aptitude level of your enterprise.
4. Download the Action Plan tool from Change Accelerator and develop a plan to improve the customer service level of your business or social enterprise.
5. Complete the C-SAT once per year and update your enterprise-wide customer service improvement plans.

Coaching Tips:

How would you and your team like to “make price irrelevant” by delivering a branded customer experience unique to your business or social enterprise? That’s the philosophy and approach of The DiJulius Group, a customer service and experience consulting firm based in Cleveland, Ohio. In his books and YouTube Channel, DiJulius outlines the approach of his business for delivering a world-class service experience. His approach uses these ten commandments of world-class customer service:

1. Service Vision: a clear purpose of why the business exists.
2. Creating a World-Class Internal Culture: attract, hire, and retain only the people who have the service DNA.
3. Non-Negotiable Experiential Standards: experience standards everyone must meet.
4. Secret Service Systems: utilizing customer intelligence to personalize their experience and engage and anticipate their needs.
5. Training to Provide a World-Class Customer Experience: systems and processes that remove variation and deliver a consistent customer experience.
6. Implementation and Execution: how to go from ideas on paper to consistently executed concepts.
7. Zero Risk: anticipating your service defects and having protocols in place to make it right.
8. Creating an Above-and-Beyond Culture: constant awareness and branding of how to be a hero.
9. Measuring Your Customer’s Experience: what gets measured gets managed.
10. World-Class Leadership: walking the talk.

The “so what” behind these principles is evident when you consider 80% of enterprises never advance beyond an average level of service. And, only 3% of companies have created a world-class capability level. These results are from research cited in DiJulius’ book, What’s the Secret?: To Providing a World-Class Customer Experience.

To learn about the work of The DiJulius Group, schedule a meeting with your entire team to watch this short video: “John DiJulius Interview, Part 2: The Ten Commandments to Providing a World-Class Customer Experience.”

After reviewing the ten principles, ask one of your team members to lead the entire team through the Company Service Aptitude Test (or C-SAT). You’ll find this 114-item survey on The DiJulius Group website. Be sure to answer each question honestly. The assessment is not a “blame exercise” as everyone in the room has had a hand in shaping the current service culture of your enterprise. Be sure to reach consensus in forming your group ratings.

After you finish and submit the C-SAT, you’ll quickly receive scores for each section as well as the overall service aptitude level of your enterprise. You can benchmark your results to the research cited in What’s the Secret?:

• 12% of companies scored Level 1 (“unacceptable” level of service aptitude)
• 29% of companies scored Level 2 (“below average” level of service aptitude)
• 39% of companies scored Level 3 (“average” level of service aptitude)
• 18% of companies scored Level 4 (“above average” level of service aptitude)
• 3% of companies scored Level 5 (“world class” level of service aptitude)

Develop an Action Plan

As you and your team process the C-SAT results, do any priority areas jump out? Are there improvement areas that could generate immediate results?

You’ll no doubt want to dig into the ten commandments of world-class customer service by reading What’s the Secret?, but plan on this being a longer-term project for your enterprise as you begin to scale your Sustainable 10X Impact Business Model and implement your Sustainable 10X Impact Business Plan. For now, focus on developing a customer service improvement plan that will start to address priority issues identified in the C-SAT.

Identify 2–3 members of your team to create a customer service improvement plan for the next 12 months. One of the actions you could immediately take is to prepare for the introduction and deployment of your Statement of Customer Experience (developed previously). This Statement is similar to a service vision as discussed by The DiJulius Group.

Use the Action Plan tool from Change Accelerator to develop your annual improvement plan. Be sure to use all of the processes and tools of Change Accelerator. For example, you could use the Case For Change Story tool in a future town-hall meeting to share new expectations and standards for delivering engaging and memorable service experiences.

If you’re in the process of finalizing or revising your business plan, use the results from this part of Module 4 in the section titled Operations and Service Strategy. Women and HeForShe investors will want to know how you’re going to engage and retain customers to deliver sustainable results and deliver on your 3X-in-10™ Revenue Sharing Offer.

Also, be sure to schedule a date for the team to come back together to re-take the Company Service Aptitude Test. You’ll want to assess your progress and develop new plans for improving the level of your organization’s customer service.

Review Questions:

Before moving to the Next Step, ask these questions:

1. What did we learn about our enterprises’ level of service aptitude?
2. Do we have clear expectations of the experience we want our frontline teams to deliver?
3. Did we create a customer service improvement plan unique to our business or social enterprise?

Estimated Time:

It will take approximately 3–4 hours (over 1–2 sessions) to complete all questions in the C-SAT. It will take another 3–4 hours (over 1–2 sessions) to develop a customer service improvement plan.

Featured Certified B Corporation:

Dialogue Experience

Recommended Resources:

To learn more about delivering world-class customer service, we recommend the following:

• What’s the Secret?: To Providing A World-Class Customer Experience by John R. DiJulius III.
• Secret Service: Hidden Systems that Deliver Unforgettable Customer Service by John R. DiJulius III.
• The Customer Service Revolution: Overthrow Conventional Business, Inspire Employees, and Change the World by John R. DiJulius III.
• Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose by Tony Hsieh (Zappos CEO).
• The Disney Way: Harnessing the Management Secrets of Disney in Your Company (3rd Edition) by Bill Capodagli and Lynn Jackson
• The Disney Way Fieldbook: How to Implement Walt Disney’s Vision of Dream, Believe, Dare, Do in Your Own Company by Bill Capodagli and Lynn Jackson.

Strategy Reviews

Required Materials:

To conduct Strategy Reviews in your enterprise, you will need access to the One Page Strategy Map and Plan and Sustainable 10X Impact Business Plan.

To Do List:

There are three actions for you and your team to complete:

1. Learn about the rationale, importance, and mechanics of conducting regular strategy review sessions in your business or social enterprise.
2. Conduct at least four strategy reviews per year to update the One Page Strategy Map and Plan and align your enterprise around its strategic direction and priorities.
3. Cascade strategy reviews to frontline teams in your business to build ownership and commitment for executing strategic priorities and generating sustainable impact.

Coaching Tips:

In The Execution Premium, Dr. Robert Kaplan and David Norton (creators of the Balanced Scorecard) share results of a study they conducted in 2006 about the systems used by organizations to manage strategy execution. They found that “having a formal strategy execution system made success 2–3X more likely as not having such a system.”

An essential component of any Balanced Scorecard Strategy Management System is the Strategy Review. The logic for these monthly or quarterly reviews is straightforward: “inspect for what you expect.” In this case, the goal is not only to review and update strategic performance but to learn where and how the organization can improve. Strategy reviews are different than operating reviews because of the cross-functional nature of the strategy map and scorecard. It is in this ongoing review process where opportunities to accelerate growth, change, and business transformation will be discovered, especially if frontline teams and team leaders are involved in the process.

To start learning about the rationale, importance, and mechanics of strategy reviews, we recommend you and your team schedule individual study time to review the following documents and YouTube videos:

• “Running a Great Strategy Review”
• “First Strategy Review Meeting (Simulation 1 of 3)”
• “Data Analysis (Series 2 of 3)”
• “Best Practice Review Meeting (Series 3 of 3)”

Strategy Review Best Practices

Mark Livingston, creator/author of the WIIN learning platform, has facilitated numerous strategy reviews over the years and has worked with internal resources (and change coaches) to develop their skills to facilitate these sessions. Here are tips for you and your internal resources to keep in mind:

• Strategy reviews are not operating reviews. Although it may be hard at first, stay focused on the One Page Strategy Map and Plan and not the tactical details of what’s happening inside functional departments (or not). You always have the option of scheduling other sessions to work on these operational issues.
• Strategy review sessions are conducted in a no-blame and no-fault environment. People must feel free to talk honestly and candidly about what’s taking place. It often requires a change in mindset and may be difficult for senior leaders accustomed to dominating the agenda or airtime. So, be patient. This capability will develop over time as trust and experience grows.
• In setting targets for each metric, use the green, yellow, and red stoplight approach. You want to set goals for your metrics in alignment with the Sustainable 10X Impact Business Plan. Some of these targets may be ambitious, and you could be reporting “red” for some time. Be “okay” with this. Ask open-ended questions to check progress and learn how to close performance gaps as efficiently and effectively as possible. Regardless of the level of performance (green, yellow, or red), ask the strategic owner and team “why did we get this result?” The aim is learning and improvement, not robotic reporting.
• Schedule strategy reviews one year in advance on a rolling schedule and without fail, conduct every single one. Otherwise, the team and organization will perceive you are not serious about the Sustainable 10X Impact Vision, Business Model, and Plan.
• Preparation is essential for strategy review success. Meet with each “strategic owner” before the session to review standards, agenda, and information to be shared.
• Typically, strategy reviews are scheduled in two to eight hour blocks of time, depending on the availability of team members and the frequency of review sessions. If you’re doing strategy reviews monthly, you might examine the top half of the strategy map one month followed by the bottom half the next. If you’re scheduling reviews quarterly, you may want to devote 1–2 hours per row (perspective).
• Every strategic priority on the strategy map must have a strategic owner, and preferably, that owner should be in a different functional area (e.g., the finance manager is the owner of priorities in the learning and growth perspective). Take advantage of the cross-functional nature of the BSC to tear down artificial walls and the thinking and mindset that often comes with these walls.
• Always update your One Page Strategy Map and Plan in a timely fashion. A good rule of thumb is no later than one week after the meeting. Ensure everyone in the organization hears about or reads the minutes from these strategy review sessions. Do not keep your strategy or strategy reviews a top secret.

Your Strategy Review Process

You should plan on conducting at least four strategy reviews per year (one per quarter). This is the minimum number. Often, enterprises in the first year or two of implementation will conduct monthly reviews and then shift to quarterly reviews once “bugs” have been worked out of the system. The option is yours.

Always communicate results to the rest of your enterprise. Keep people informed in numerous ways, including follow-up town-hall meetings. You don’t want to raise expectations of your business and then not keep them informed about progress, lessons learned, and pending changes. You completed (or will complete) the Activity titled “Case for Change Story” in Module 3 to build the support and commitment of employees in your enterprise. So, keep everyone in-the-loop (especially if the majority of measures are in the “red zone”).

After the first several strategy reviews, consider organizing and conducting a “bottom-up” strategy review (versus the typical “top-down” sessions involving only senior leaders). Or, schedule a combination of both. The point here is to listen to the “voice” of frontline teams and discover ways to make their jobs easier so they can deliver engaging customer experiences, simplify internal processes, and deliver sustainable results.

You can also use this opportunity to recognize the efforts and achievements of frontline teams (especially if they’re working on a challenging project or goal/target). Respectfully conduct all sessions following ground rules or standards adopted for strategy review sessions. As you well know, the positive or negative experience of employees in a “bottom-up strategy review” will be widely shared and known by every employee in the enterprise by the close of business that day.

Review Questions:

Before moving to the Next Step, ask these questions:

1. Did we establish and live up to a set of standards for how we want to conduct strategy reviews?
2. What did we learn about our organization from the last strategy review?
3. Did we create a clear plan of action for addressing issues identified in the previous strategy review?

Estimated Time:

It will take approximately 8 hours per quarter to conduct regular strategy reviews, not including preparation time.

Featured Certified B Corporation:

Beau’s All Natural Brewing Company

Recommended Resources:

To learn more about strategy reviews and the Balanced Scorecard Strategy Management System, we recommend the following:

• The Strategy Review Process by David Norton and Jay Weiser (Balanced Scorecard Report, November – December 2006).
• Execution Premium: Linking Strategy to Operations for Competitive Advantage by Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton.
• Balanced Scorecards and Operational Dashboards with Microsoft Excel by Ron Person.

Process Improvement Plan

Required Materials:

To develop a Process Improvement Plan, you will need to visit the website and YouTube Channels of Ian James, The Process Consultant. You will also need Change Accelerator© and your Sustainable 10X Impact Business Plan.

To Do List:

There are five actions for you and your team to complete:

1. Review six short videos on mapping and improving business processes.
2. Review the four-part video series on The Buyer’s Journey from The Process Consultant website.
3. Use the Action Plan template from Change Accelerator to create (or update) a Process Improvement Plan.
4. Use the SIPOC and RACI Profile, along with other tools from the Change Accelerator Toolkit to simplify, streamline, and align the internal workflows of your business or social enterprise.
5. Identify the top ten process improvement opportunities and include within the Annual B Impact Improvement Plan and Sustainable 10X Impact Business Plan.

Coaching Tips:

This part of Simplify Internal Processes focuses on Systems, the third “S” of the 4S Model. As you’ll recall, 4S stands for (1) Strategy, (2) Structure, (3) Systems, and (4) Skills. A key requirement for building a sustainable, high-impact enterprise is continuously monitoring and improving the alignment of these four components of effective organization design.

Yet, we know that life does not always work according to a model or to plan. Things change in the competitive environment, in the lives of customers, and within the four walls of your enterprise. This is why process improvement (sometimes called continuous improvement) is critical to your success. By not continuously improving (or changing) systems, processes, and workflows, a business or social enterprise will find it difficult to deliver the results promised in a Sustainable 10X Impact Business Plan and 3X-in-10™ Revenue Sharing Offer.

To learn how to streamline and improve internal workflows, schedule an hour of individual study time to watch six videos from the ProcessConsultantChannel on Youtube. Here are the links:

• “What is a Business Process?”
• “Process Mapping Pitfalls and How to Avoid Them”
• “Process Improvement – Setting Up for Success”
• “Process Improvement – Visibility”
• “Process Improvement – People”
• “Improving Business Processes – Handoffs”

To ensure everyone on your team is up-to-speed with process mapping, moderate a discussion about the six videos and white paper. If needed, cue up one or more of the videos to review important points and stimulate discussion.

Notice the definition of a process used by Ian James, The Process Consultant: “a sequence of (arbitrary) activities designed to create something of value.” With apologies to Mr. James, we added the word “arbitrary” to his definition. We did this as a reminder to you that workflows, roles, and job positions are in fact arbitrary. You have the power to make changes in how processes are designed anytime it makes sense and is warranted.

Internal and External Processes

To expand on this point, take the time with your fellow team members to watch four more videos from the website of The Process Consultant. You’ll find these four videos by clicking on the Business Process Videos link at the very top of this website. The four videos focus on:

• “Aligning the Sales Process to the Buyer’s Journey (Part 1)”
• “Why Cold Calling is So Inefficient (Part 2)”
• “Smart Lead Generation (Part 3)”
• “Misaligning the Sales Process and the Buyer’s Journey at Closing (Part 4)”

This series highlights the need to align internal sales processes with the experience of customers as they move through a decision and buying process. The Business Process Maps and Customer Journey Maps you’ll be creating, validating, and improving on a continuous basis are the “heads” and “tails” of the same coin. You and your team need to align these two maps and processes to deliver the customer revenue, retention, and loyal promoter behavior built into your Sustainable 10X Impact Business Model and Plan.

Always start with the journey and experience of customers at critical “touch-points” of your business or social enterprise. Then, develop the internal workflows required to deliver the service and experiences desired by customers. This two-step “dance” is one that needs to be designed and orchestrated across your entire organization. This is the orchestration and systematization that Disney (for example) has been able to deliver and one of the primary reasons this enterprise continue to amaze and delight customers and their shareholders and investors.

So, what’s your version of The Disney Experience? You need both the Customer Journey Maps and Business Process Maps to deliver this experience in a repeatable, scalable, and profitable manner. Sounds like a “Key Activity” on the left side of your Sustainable 10X Impact Business Model, doesn’t it?

Your Process Improvement Plan

Now that you and your team have a basic understanding of business process mapping and improvement, it’s time to develop (or update) a Process Improvement Plan for your business or social enterprise. This Plan should be incorporated into a number of other plans, including Scaling Action Plans, Annual B Impact Improvement Plan, and the Sustainable 10X Impact Business Plan.

To develop a Process Improvement Plan, use the Action Plan template from Change Accelerator and identify the top ten processes within your enterprise that need to be put under the microscope and redesigned to support scaling and growth.

In addition to this template, download the SIPOC and RACI Profile tools from the Change Accelerator Toolkit. SIPOC stands for Suppliers, Inputs, Process, Outputs, and Customers. RACI stands for Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed.

Both tools will help you map the as-is process as well as redesign roles needed for the new process. The RACI Profile, in particular, is a useful complement to the Business Process Map, as it gets into more detailed analysis of who, what, and when.

You will need a way to document the Business Process Maps that result from your Process Improvement Plan. We have two options for you to consider. First, you can use several PowerPoint templates from the SlideModel.com website. The second option is yEd, a free process mapping tool provided by yWorks. Ian James, The Process Consultant, offers the yEd Free Process Mapping Tutorial Course on his website to help you learn and apply this tool.

We also recommend reviewing more of the content on The Process Consultant website. There are several excellent blog posts and articles, including:

• Process Mapping Pitfalls and How to Avoid Them
• How Detailed Should a Process Map Be?
• Asking Effective Process Discovery Questions

We have one last coaching tip. Be sure to identify an “owner” for each of the processes you’ve included in your Process Improvement Plan. These owners have a fundamental responsibility to develop, document, and improve Business Process Maps. They also have a responsibility to train (or cross-train) team members using process documentation in your web-based Business Process Library (subject of the next Activity). To help members of your team perform in this role, consult Implementation Resources in the BIA Library.

Review Questions:

Before moving to the Next Step, ask these questions:

1. Do we understand the requirements for effective process mapping and improvement?
2. Did we create a Process Improvement Plan for our business or social enterprise and identify the top ten process improvement opportunities?
3. Is our marketing and sales process aligned with the needs, expectations, and emotions identified in our Customer Persona and Journey Maps? Did we include this improvement opportunity in our Process Improvement Plan?

Estimated Time:

It will take approximately 2–3 hours to review the videos from The Process Consultant and another 2–3 hours for a small work group to develop a Process Improvement Plan.

Featured Certified B Corporation:

Little Sun

Recommended Resources:

To learn more about improving business processes, we recommend the following:

• The Process Consultant YouTube Channel (YouTube Channel of Ian James and his firm, The Process Consultant).
• The Process Consultant (the second YouTube Channel of Mr. James).
• SlideModel.com (affordable subscriptions to 12,000 PowerPoint templates and slide designs, including several styles of flowcharts and diagrams for mapping processes).
• yEd (free process mapping tool from yWorks).
• yEd Free Process Mapping Tutorial Course
• Managing Sideways: Using the Rummler-Brache Process Improvement Approach to Achieve Performance Breakthrough by Price Pritchett.
• Improving Performance: How to Manage the White Space on the Organization Chart by Geary Rummler and Alan Brache.
• Business Process Improvement Methodology Toolkit

Business Process Maps and Library

Required Materials:

To create Business Process Maps and a Business Process Library, you will need to visit the website of The Process Consultant. You will also need your Process Improvement Plan and list of top ten improvement opportunities.

To Do List:

There are four actions for you and your team to complete:

1. Watch a short video titled “Is Your Process Documentation a Mess?” and learn about the Process Discovery solution provided by Ian James, The Process Consultant.
2. Schedule and conduct a Skype conference with Mr. James to learn more about his Process Discovery program.
3. Incorporate Process Discovery expenses into the current operating budget or the growth capital requirements of your Sustainable 10X Impact Business Plan.
4. Start implementation of the Process Discovery program and establish your Business Process Library to accelerate learning and performance at the frontline of your enterprise.

Coaching Tips:

This part of Simplify Internal Processes focuses on Skills, the fourth “S” of the 4S Model. As you’ll recall, 4S stands for (1) Strategy, (2) Structure, (3) Systems, and (4) Skills. As one of the leaders of an impact-driven enterprise, it is your responsibility to ensure you’re not “putting good performers in a bad system.”

Yet, this often happens in organizations. Frontline team members are not provided the tools, training, and resources to perform confidently or proficiently. In many cases, management offers a “sink-or-swim” employee proposition that results in bad service, low productivity, and customers who leave and never return. If this situation is taking place in your organization, then you may be setting yourself up for some painful lessons as you try to scale and grow.

Previously, you learned about the work of Ian James, The Process Consultant. In this section, we’ll continue diving into the tools provided on The Process Consultant website. You’ll learn how to achieve a quick-start to your business process improvement efforts as well as establish a Business Process Library to ensure process maps and documentation become a permanent feature of your frontline operations.

To start, visit The Process Consultant website and listen to a short video from Ian James titled Is Your Process Documentation a Mess? In the video, James makes these comments:

“Even large and sophisticated organizations struggle with their processes. And a big part of the problem is lack of business process documentation.”

Process Discovery

As a counter-measure, James has created a solution he calls Process Discovery. You can learn more about Process Discovery on his website.

Plan to reach out to Ian James through his contact form on The Process Consultant website and request a Skype conference to discuss the Process Discovery program.

You can frame the Process Discovery program with your team as a quick-start process to get the enterprise up and running in developing Business Process Maps and a Business Process Library. Share the top 10 list of processes in your Process Improvement Plan with Mr. James and identify the process you believe would be well-suited for a pilot test.

You can incorporate expenses of the Process Discovery program into your current operating budget. Or, include this cost as a line item in the Growth Capital Requirements section of your Business Plan if you are planning a 3X-in-10™ Growth Capital Campaign.

What is the ROI?

You may be wondering if this investment is worth it. Here’s our point of view. In the Evaluate Customer Engagement activity of Module 1, you answered this question: “Do you know the lifetime value of your customers?” You can also ask this question in a different way: “Do you know the long-term revenue loss your enterprise will suffer if your most valuable customers decide to stop doing business with you?” Armed with this information, you should be able to calculate a quick return-on-investment related to investing in the Rapid Process Discovery program.

However, the added-value is not only in producing new or improved process maps, training new process owners, or establishing an online portal of learning materials to accelerate performance. The real value is embedding “process thinking” at every level of your organization. If you reviewed the four videos from The Process Consultant website in the previous part of this Module, you realized how important it is to “align” Customer Journey Maps with Business Process Maps. This type of thinking and action needs to be replicated and orchestrated throughout your entire organization if you want to achieve high customer retention rates, grow brand advocates, and ensure recurring revenue streams to meet your 3X-in-10™ Revenue Sharing obligations.

One final note: be sure to add the Process Discovery program to your One Page Strategy Map and Plan in the far right column. Implementing this program will be one of the most important strategic projects going forward to generate business impact and ensure delivery of sustainable results and impact.

Review Questions:

Before moving to the Next Step, ask these questions:

1. In what shape is our process documentation? What do we need to improve?
2. Do we know how long it takes new employees to reach proficiency in each position of our enterprise?
3. Do we have a secure portal of job aids and other learning materials for the operation of our critical systems, business processes, and workflows?

Estimated Time:

It will take approximately 2–3 hours to review information about the Rapid Process Discovery program, including discussion within the team and Skype conference call with Ian James.

Featured Certified B Corporation:  

Spark Strategy

Recommended Resources:

To learn more about mapping, documenting, and improving business processes, we recommend the following:

• The Process Consultant YouTube Channel (YouTube Channel of Ian James and his firm, The Process Consultant).
• The Process Consultant (the second YouTube Channel of Mr. James).
• SlideModel.com (affordable subscriptions to 12,000 PowerPoint templates and slide designs, including several styles of flowcharts and diagrams for mapping processes).
• yEd (free process mapping tool from yWorks).
• yEd Free Process Mapping Tutorial Course
• Managing Sideways: Using the Rummler-Brache Process Improvement Approach to Achieve Performance Breakthrough by Price Pritchett.
• Improving Performance: How to Manage the White Space on the Organization Chart by Geary Rummler and Alan Brache.
• Business Process Improvement Methodology Toolkit