By | Published On: July 21, 2022 |

 

Welcome to episode 90 of my podcast The Executive Edge with Alexis Kingsbury

Alexis is an award-winning entrepreneur, with over 10 years of experience. He is currently running two SaaS businesses (AirManual and Spidergap). He runs these with a remote & global team and supports others as a board member or consultant. This includes well-known companies like Sony PlayStation.

He came on to the podcast to talk about where business inevitably gets things wrong. It is often if current systems are inaccurate, clunky, or problematic. New joiners in particular may not know information they need from HR or their manager, and how to be effective in their role.

What else did we discuss?

We then went on to discuss the efficiency with the way business runs processes and that getting these right, helps consistency. When something is done consistently, it reduces the risk of error. It also avoids costing the business money or time to sort this.

Even if a process is documented and the steps listed out, it is of great value. It avoids missing much needed data. This may be less about tackling big steps and more about refining the little steps. Refinements, or improvements generate a positive culture. This is because it’s in the spirit of the 1% gain or process of continuous improvement. If everything is improved by little steps, the difference becomes measurable. This is either in performance or the effect on the bottom line.

The benefits are clear.  It includes that systems that run more smoothly, make fewer mistakes, scale faster and are more consistent. Most businesses have these processes in place but they’re inefficient . So, in reality they may not do what they’re really meant to. It’s also his belief that these processes can be used by anyone.  They’re not just the domain of one group of people or the top Executives only.

For example, Alexis describes a situation where he was onboarding two new members of staff.  Instead of hoping for the best and leaving them to it, he designed a checklist. That way they could systematically work through the values of the business, the main systems they use and what else they’d need to run their job well. Alexis managed to successfully onboard his new employees much faster than normal.

He and his co-founder also built a highly successful 360° Feedback tool called Spidergap, used by over 500 organizations around the world. You can find out more about this from www.spidergap.com.