Process Improvement:

5 Ways to make your

operations more transparent
Benjamin Lander
 Process Improvement: 5 Ways to increase transparency over your operations
Growing your company means figuring things out as you go and just making things work. It's the
magic of an early company. But to grow it further, it’s necessary to build a stable basis for your
operations.
Everything starts with transparency. This may sound simple, but I found that this step of creating
transparency can be pretty overwhelming. Here are five things you can do to create transparency in
the operations of your company.

Capture the status quo of your processes

Especially if you have a capable team that’s able to figure things out on their own (good for you), you
or your team leads may only have limited transparency on how work is being performed. Most of the
process knowledge will be in peoples’ heads. The benefits of institutionalizing this knowledge:
• The exercise of writing things down alone creates transparency
• Your team can agree on a common way to do things
• You build the basis for later improvement efforts
In this first step of creating transparency, it is critical to just document without trying to improve at
the same time. (Of course, once you have that transparency, a next step can be to optimize your
operations.)
There are many different tools you can use to capture your processes. A simple and visual tool is to
use a swimlane diagram: It shows all steps involved in a process, sorted by responsibility. Next to
the simple flow of things, it will also show you the number of handoffs. I’ve used Powerpoint or
Lucidcharts to create swimlane diagrams.

Once your team has created a swimlane diagram, all the team members should sign off on it to
confirm that this is the current way they do things. This will make sure everyone has a common
understanding.

Implement a KPI System

You might have a good feeling over your operational performance, but measuring it and monitoring
it on an ongoing basis gives you the transparency you need to take managerial action. Key
Performance Indicators do just that: They provide a quick snapshot of how your organization is
performing. Use them to compare performance over time or to define thresholds that trigger certain
actions. Anyway, they will give you transparency over your organization's performance.
Examples for KPIs include Customer Churn Rate for an eCommerce business or Utilisation Rate for
an agency. So how to set up a KPI system?
STEP 1: ASK YOUR TEAM WHAT THEY USE TO MEASURE PERFORMANCE.
Your team will have implicit performance measures already in place, whether they track them or not:
They will have a good feeling over what makes their performance good. So the first step is asking
them. E.g., the account management team will know that upselling existing clients is a good thing,
even though they might not be measuring it. Collect all that implicit knowledge.
STEP 2: QUALITY CHECK KPIS
A really useful KPI system should follow some rules. Check the KPIs you have collected
against these criteria.
 Process Improvement: 5 Ways to increase transparency over your operations
THE 3MS
Ask yourself these questions:
• Is this KPI meaningful? Why is it important for my business?
• Can I measure it? It doesn’t make sense tracking something that you can´t measure.
• Is it manageable? Monitoring indicators you have no control over will only stress you out.
LEADING VS LAGGING
You want your metrics to be as early in the process as possible and that they are causing outcomes,
not depending on inputs. E.g., revenue will, in most cases, not be a good KPI; measuring new
incoming orders or customer acquisition would be better as they predict the future revenue.
OUTPUT, NOT ACTIVITY
You want to measure output, not activity. After all, you want to achieve results and not just keep
people busy.
STEP 3: SORT THE KPIS YOU COLLECTED INTO A MATRIX OF STRATEGIC GOALS AND
STAKEHOLDERS.
This step ensures that you are measuring the things that are defining your business success and are
relevant to your strategic goals.

Decide on your strategic goals for your company. What you measure highly depends on where you
want to go. If you want to increase sales by increasing your retention, you will measure different
things than as if you wanted to enter new products.
Making sure all stakeholders are covered has proven valuable in designing a 360° KPI system that
considers all parties relevant to your business.
It’s not necessary to have a KPI for every strategy/stakeholder combination; it would be sufficient to
have at least one for every strategic goal and every stakeholder. However, filling every combination
will give you a super-comprehensive KPI system. Add KPIs as needed. Also, make sure all teams
have KPIs they can work with. If you can’t come up with KPIs for one of your teams, ask yourself why
that is.
Also, take a look at industry standards. It might make sense to include some KPIs that are common
in the industry to benchmark.
 Process Improvement: 5 Ways to increase transparency over your operations
STEP 4: SET UP THE PROCESS OF KPI MEASUREMENT
Define a person responsible for collecting KPIs, usually in the controlling department.
Define where the data is coming from, who collects it how often, and where and how the KPIs are
calculated. Create a visual representation of the numbers, as visuals are so much more powerful
than numbers alone.

You also have to decide if you want to calculate the KPI manually or automatically. That depends on
the frequency you want to look at them. Automated data retrieval and calculation has the benefit of
having data available at no time and effort, any time.
If there’s somebody who is manually compiling data or at least documenting the KPI, let’s say for
the weekly meeting, I’ve found that this is a super valuable exercise as people need to spend time
looking at their performance.
“Sometimes, creating a report is more valuable than reading it.”
Also, you want to look into using BI tools. But don’t confuse Business Intelligence with KPIs. One
allows you to look at different measures of your business from different, dynamic angles. The other
directs your energy and sets your focus onto the measures you deem critical for your business.

Optimize culture and meetings for transparency

Design your meeting landscape to support transparency. Hold daily shop floor style meetings. Use
these meetings to go through visual displays of your team's KPIs.
Make sure you have open communication that allows people to speak up. There can be barriers that
keep your team from bringing problems to your attention, such as ambiguity, asymmetrical power
dynamics and social pressure. Work towards a culture and team norms that support speaking up.
Give and ask for feedback often to foster a frequent flow of positive and negative information. Make
sure your team has transparency over strategic goals and the business. And most importantly: If one
of your team members opens up about something negative, react calmly and don’t kill the
messenger. Use phrases like “Thank you for bringing that to my attention.”, even if the message is
very negative.
“Don’t kill the messenger.”
Also, use Gemba walks to stay on top of things. Management by walking around is a powerful tool
that enables you to see what’s going on in your company.
 Process Improvement: 5 Ways to increase transparency over your operations

Establish a continuous improvement mindset

Try to establish a continuous improvement mindset in your company. Ask your team members to
collect process improvement suggestions in a shared spreadsheet or another place. Go over this
collection every week. Assign the task of managing the continuous improvement efforts to one of
your team members. And stay on it.
Showcase improvements and what they meant for your business. Seeing what earlier measures
resulted in will give a sense of appreciation to your team and show that their effort is worth it.
Implementing these continuous improvement measures will create a steady flow of information, of
problems and possible solutions in your organization and give you a good feeling of what’s going
on.

Get outside help

You might already have a feeling that you lack transparency, and you also know which areas you
would like to tackle first, but you still don’t do it. There are several possible reasons (I’ve personally
experienced all of them):
First and foremost, many CEOs and Owners just don’t have the time to look into these topics; daily
operations keep them too busy to set aside time for these improvement efforts.
Also, you just might not be familiar with how to implement a KPI system or a shop floor meeting.
This doesn’t mean that you can’t do it; it’s a central trait of an entrepreneur to figure out things they
don’t know. It just raises the bar of getting started.
Studies have repeatedly found that many entrepreneurs tend to wait too long to get outside help.
Getting outside help from a consultant can be the solution here. You gain bandwidth, methodical
know-how and an outside view on your company. After years of building your company, this outside
view can add real value.
When choosing the consultant, make sure you bring someone in that will support you with the
implementation of the above measures. A fancy slide deck on what would be best to do will not help
you. Also, don’t judge by price alone but rather use an ROI-based approach where you compare the
cost of a consultant with the bottom line improvements they can generate.

One step at a time

Transparency is the necessary basis for making informed decisions about your operations. To keep
things manageable, treat creating transparency and taking action based on it as two separate tasks.
Otherwise, you might end up doing neither of the two right.
All the best for your transparency implementation efforts. As always, let me know your thoughts in
the comments section.

About the Author

Benjamin Lander has 14 years of experience in a variety of industries such as
automotive, e-commerce as well as digital and event marketing. He held
management positions in marketing, project and product management and has
founded and led his own company as CEO. Benjamin's passion for organizational
behavior and operational excellence materializes in his work as a management
consultant and as the creator of the Good Management Blog.
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