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The operations self-check.
These are the twelve questions we walk through in the first session of an Operations Audit. Run them on your own operation. Wherever an answer makes you wince, that's where we would start.
If your most senior operations person took two weeks' leave tomorrow, what would stop?
Which numbers exist in more than one place – and disagree when you check?
What report does someone rebuild by hand every week or every month?
Where does work sit waiting because it depends on one person noticing it?
Which approval, when that approver is unreachable, blocks everything behind it?
What information gets re-typed from one system or spreadsheet into another?
Where is customer and supplier information kept, and how many copies of it are there?
What breaks when a new hire starts, because the process only lives in someone's head?
Which task is done "the way we've always done it", and no one can say why?
Where do you find out about a problem only after it has already cost money?
What would a lender or an auditor ask for that you could not produce this week?
If the business doubled in six months, which part of the operation breaks first?