Do you know all of the steps required to make the change?

Trying to juggle your time in a business to make a change is one thing.

Knowing all of the steps of the change is another challenge, however. If you don't know, and can't communicate, all of the steps then you run a high risk of not seeing the improvement through.

Let me give you a quick example.

A client was trying to change a procurement process. Their improvement activity was identified as being:

Hold a half hour meeting to make the changes.

The actual tasks were:

Update specific Terms and Conditions (2 hours).
Finalise purchasing form (0.5 hours).
Create supplier response document (1 hour).
Upload documents to cloud storage (0.25 hours).
Link documents and finalise upload (0.25 hours).
Create template purchasing email, finalise and distribute (0.5 hours).
Complete revision to quality procedure (1 hour).
Provide training to the team (1 hour).

By writing this out we took the stalling change and got it completed over the course of the next two working weeks (it had been going on for months).

If you don't know all of the tasks you can get lost (amongst all of your other priorities) and not complete the work. Taking the time to understand all of the work involved allows you to plan effectively, manage expectations and gives you something to focus on.

Don't let improvements slip through your fingers from being vague at the outset!

Giles Johnston
Author of Business Process Re-Engineering

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