Standardizing Your Processes: The Key to Long-Term Success

Standardizing processes may sound intimidating. Some may paint a negative picture in their heads of people being forced to work like machines to ensure efficiency and maximize productivity, but this is not what standardization looks like.

First of all, a standard exists not to control: A standard exists to ensure the same level of quality is delivered the same way and the right way every time. Standardizing your processes is meant to make things better for the people behind the operations. It’s not about what helps the company: It’s about what helps the people going through the process and, as a result, the company benefits.

Here are four ways standardization can help your company succeed.

#1 Improve clarity and eliminate ambiguity and confusion.

In my work leading teams through process improvement, the number one root cause of all operation problems is this: Someone not knowing what they were supposed to do, when they were supposed to do it or how they were supposed to do it. Having a standard process solves this problem.

Standardizing your processes eliminates the need for guesswork and gets rid of duplicated efforts. When your processes are standardized and…