Are operational inefficiencies hamstringing your growth? Step 1 is figuring out what's not working. Step 2 is systematizing and automating. Here's an exercise that will get you started!
Inefficiency is a major growth killer for small businesses. Untamed processes and a lack of systems and automation lead to productivity leaks, bottlenecks, and dropped balls. But when you've *always* done things a certain way, it can be hard to pinpoint what's not working and where things are breaking down. The fix? Conduct an operations audit. For 2 weeks, have each member of your team (including you) use a time-tracking tool like Toggl to diligently track every minute of their time. Once you have the data, analyze it closely: -> How much time is spent on recurring tasks and processes? -> Which tasks are the biggest time sucks? -> Where are the bottlenecks occurring? -> Where is too much time being spent on low-leverage activities? Maybe it's something like responding to similar customer inquiries over and over rather than automating your support responses. Or recreating the same metrics reports or presentations from scratch each time. With those inefficiencies identified, you can now streamline and optimize. For repetitive tasks, create standard operating procedures (SOPs) using checklists and documented steps. Creating air-tight SOPs is crucial for scaling seamlessly, but it's also massively time-consuming...unless you put AI to work! My favorite fast hack: record yourself completing the task then use Otter.ai to transcribe and Claude.ai or ChatGPT to outline the process with all the step-by-step details. For other lower-leverage, but less standardized, tasks causing bottlenecks, look at what you can delegate to existing team members or virtual assistants. Or see if there are apps and tools to automate those processes entirely (more on this in a later post). While AI can be a big productivity and efficiency booster for your business, the first step is understanding where you need it most. Start with an operations audit and you'll be surprised how many hours you can reclaim each week from inefficient ways of working. If you want help auditing your team's priorities and output and identifying opportunities for operational improvement, let's chat. #aiforbusiness #AIForEntrepreneurs #WorkSmarter #businessoperations #automation #efficiency