When Was the Last Time You Stopped Doing Something in Your Business?

Businesses are really good at adding things.

A new report. Another approval. An extra step in a process. A weekly meeting. A spreadsheet to track information that’s already being tracked somewhere else.

Usually, there was a good reason for adding it.

The problem is that we don’t always go back and ask whether that reason still exists.

Over time, businesses can end up with a surprising amount of work that’s being done for one simple reason:

We’ve always done it that way.

How Unnecessary Work Sticks Around

Most inefficient business processes don’t start out inefficient.

Maybe a report was created because a particular manager wanted to see those numbers every Friday. That manager left two years ago, but someone still creates the report every week.

Maybe an approval was added after one expensive mistake. Now every request requires three signatures, even though the original problem was addressed years ago.

Maybe employees enter information into one system and then copy it into a spreadsheet because, at some point, someone needed both.

Nobody intentionally decided to waste time.

The process just stayed.

And when something becomes routine, we tend to stop questioning it.

Try the “Why Are We Still Doing This?” Test

For one week, pay attention to the routine work happening around you.

When you notice something that seems unnecessarily complicated, don’t immediately change it. Just ask a few questions:

• Who actually uses this?
• What would happen if we stopped doing it?
• Why does this need an approval?
• Are we entering the same information more than once?
• Could this process have fewer steps?
• Is this solving a problem that still exists?

You may find that everything has a perfectly good reason.

You may also discover that no one actually knows why something is being done.

That’s worth knowing.

Don’t Confuse Familiar With Necessary

There’s a reason changing a process can make people uncomfortable. Familiar processes feel safe because everyone already knows how they work.

But “this is how we do it” and “this is the best way to do it” are two very different things.

That doesn’t mean every old process needs to go. Some extra steps protect the business. Some approvals are important. Some reports really are useful.

The goal isn’t to remove steps just for the sake of removing them. It’s to make sure the work you’re asking people to do still has a purpose.

Sometimes Saving Time Means Doing Less

When businesses look for ways to improve productivity or create more capacity, it’s natural to focus on how work is getting done.

Sometimes there’s a much easier answer:

Stop doing work that doesn’t need to be done.

Removing one unnecessary 15-minute task may not sound significant.

But if five employees do it every week, that’s 65 hours of work over the course of a year.

And that’s just one task.

When you’re looking for ways to save time, don’t just look at how the work is getting done. Take a closer look at whether all of it still needs to be done in the first place.

You might find some time hiding in plain sight.

Take a Broader Look at Your Business

Unnecessary processes are just one of the things that can be difficult to notice when you’re focused on running a business every day.

TEL Staffing & HR created the free Small Business Report Card to help you step away from the day-to-day and take a broader look at four areas of your business: People, Operations, Compliance & Protection, and Growth & Scalability.

It’s a quick way to identify what’s working well and where it might be worth taking a closer look.

Take a few minutes. Be honest. See how your business measures up.