Optimize For Outcomes - The Podcast

Hey everyone! This is a quick update on the last couple of months and an update on plans for future episodes.

In this episode, I cover a system that you can use in your business for interviewing prospective employees or contractors.
 
I cover how to prepare for the interview including identifying the must haves and nice to haves.
 
I talk through organizing questions and how to structure questions to get more meaningful answers.
 
I give a few examples from actual interviews that I did.
 
This one is about twice as long as usual, but I didn't want to leave anything out or split it in half.

The written version of this with the mentioned summary can be found at https://www.optimizeforoutcomes.com/how-to-interview-potential-employees-or-contractors-a-systems-thinking-approach/.

Hiring the right resources in your business is one of the most important activities you can do.
 
 Do it right and you'll be able to achieve more than you could ever imagine.
 
 Do it wrong and your team or business will stagnate at best.
 
 In this episode, I cover the key steps in getting the people resources you need including long-term employees, contractors, freelancers, and vendors.
 
 Here's a link to a related resource mentioned in this video - a course on how to perform a time study - https://resources.optimizeforoutcomes.com/product/time-study/

One of the most important things you do as a leader is to identify and bring people resources into your business.
 
This week is an introduction to People Lifecycle Management.
 
I introduce the four phases of managing people in your business and lay the foundation for deep dives into each of the phases in the coming four weeks.

Learning how to hire, rewire, inspire, and retire people is critical to growing and scaling your business beyond the solo entrepreneur phase.

Change Management is an important part of any optimization work that you do in your business.
 
People have a tendency to revert to old habits. Even when a change is beneficial, people can slide back to doing things "the old way."
 
Change management helps you proactively address this concern and helps you ensure that any changes you make will become new habits that last.

If you want to get more efficient and/or grow your business or team, learning how to automate business processes is critical to reaching that outcome.
 
I will sequence how you can approach automating business processes and give you some pointers on things to do and things to avoid.
 
Having this lightweight framework will give you a mental model for thinking through the core steps to automating a business process in an effective and efficient manner.

If you want to improve business processes, a simple mental model can help you with your approach.

Eliminate, Consolidate, Automate
 
Eliminate the things you're doing that aren't helping you achieve your desired outcomes or adding value to the Customer.
 
Consolidate like "things" in your business into a single process to manage them.
 
Automate your business processes, removing manual work and giving your business scale that it otherwise couldn't get.

A SIPOC is a process improvement tool that you can use to map a business process.
 
SIPOC is an acronym that stands for Supplier, Input, Process Step, Output, Customer. Use it to map these attributes of a business system.
 
You can then use this information to identify changes to make to improve your system.
 
I've added some additional elements to the SIPOC to increase its usability and value in process improvement work.

You can better manage your employees using swimlane diagrams. A swimlane diagram is going to help you understand the dynamics between different roles in your business or team and help you identify potential problems or conflicts.

You're also going to gain perspective on the work the team is actually doing which you can use for goal setting and career planning.

Visit People Management - Optimize For Outcomes to learn how I can help you better manage employees in your company.

Use a swimlane diagram to document your processes. Draw lanes left to right for each person or tech in a process and then draw out each step in the process and put it in the swimlane for the person or tech responsible for that tech.
 
This will help you see and understand where handoffs are happening in your process as well as rework and process loops.
 
All of these are big areas of inefficiency that you can then address with systems thinking and process improvement tools which will help you scale with less waste.