S2E10: PROCESS | Your “Way” Followed By All

Have you ever wondered how some organizations achieve consistent success while others struggle to execute their plans effectively? Me too. The answer, my friends, lies in Followed By All. Followed By All is an EOS® tool that involves following a specific set of steps to ensure consistent execution and accountability throughout your company.

Once your core processes are documented and simplified, or a decision is made, Followed By All is the tool that ensures everyone follows through in excellence. It creates consistency, scalability, efficiency, ease of management, more fun, more peace, and more profitability for you and your company. When everyone is aligned on how things should be done, it reduces confusion, it improves communication, and it enhances overall efficiency.

Sounds great, right? You can do it too. Now, many people overlook this particular tool, because they think documenting the processes is the trick; it’s not. The heavy lifting is in Followed By All. When you’re introducing Followed By All to your team, set the stage by clearly communicating the decision, the plan, and the expectation to all of your team members.

Ensure that everyone understands the rationale behind the decision and that part of the organization is properly trained and equipped with the knowledge and the skills necessary to execute the plan or process. Provide your team with the tools, the resources, and the training required to successfully carry out their roles and focus efforts on the vital few activities that have the greatest impact on achieving your desired results.

Please make sure you simplify. Some of the biggest pitfalls lie in over-documenting. Yes, that’s right. Over-documenting. Too often, when you over-document, you prevent people from finding creative solutions within the other 80% of what their job is. So document the 20% that will get you the 80% of results…

Then training becomes much simpler, ensuring that the things we die on the hill for are the things we pay attention to. So as you look at your processes, make sure you keep it simple – but not simpler than it needs to be. It’s a tightrope you walk, but with three to seven bullet points behind every key step, you can maintain that people are trained well and that they can follow along.

Step two is to establish clear Measurables that allow you to track progress and hold people accountable. Measurables create clarity and ensure that everyone knows what is expected of them. Again, you want to focus on the essential activities that drive results. They are weekly activity-based numbers. So when you look within your process as you document it, any one of those steps might be an inflection point worth measuring for a given employee.

When you look at them, those Measurables go straight to a scorecard. They’re ensuring frequency, compliance, or the overall outcome. Within your processes lie some key metrics and measurables that your team needs. You must be able to pay attention to these because there’s no point in documenting your processes if you’re not going to measure them. 

Step three: Effective leadership, management, and accountability are vital components of Followed By All…

By providing clear direction, support, and guidance to your team members, you can monitor progress, provide feedback, and address any issues that might arise. 

This standard of accountability ensures that individuals take ownership of their responsibilities and deliver on their commitments. You must – after doing the hard work of documenting and simplifying and then measuring – be able to lead and manage to keep people accountable to what we’ve taken the time to document.

If you’re not going to do that, you cannot complain about accountability. Your processes will not manage themselves. Humans are doing the work, so if you’re leading and managing – and if things aren’t working right – it’s a continuous improvement loop to send them back up to be trained if something’s being missed with any kind of frequency.

Last but not least, step four is to update. Provide regular updates and ongoing communication to keep everyone informed about progress and any necessary changes, adjustments, and/or improvements to our core processes. Share updates on your measurables, address the challenges or changes, keep your team engaged and aligned with the overall goals, and empower them to update and improve the processes we have.

After all, they’re the ones doing the work. This open communication also provides employees the opportunity to share their insights and suggestions for improvement. Should you question or want to change a process, that becomes an issue at your Level 10 Meeting™. At the Level 10 Meeting you decide whether that process changes or not.

When Followed By All is implemented well, everything flows smoothly. Following those four steps of training, measuring, LMA (lead, manage, hold people accountable), and updating your processes becomes simplified, continuous improvement…

Imagine a marketing team in an organization that decides to launch a new advertising campaign. The team leader effectively communicates the campaign strategy, the objectives, and the timeline for every team member. Every team member then commits to their specific tasks such as content creation, design, campaign tracking, etc. 

Throughout the campaign, the team consistently executes their assigned responsibilities, ensuring that every member contributes to that campaign’s success. They address concerns or questions during team meetings, fostering open dialogue, and maintaining alignment. By adhering to Followed By All, those team members remain accountable for their actions and deliverables. They receive regular feedback on their progress, and they adjust their strategies as needed.

As a result, the campaign launches smoothly, reaches the target audience effectively, and achieves the desired marketing objectives. If it worked once, document it. Lather, rinse, repeat, and improve over time. You can achieve this level of success in your business too. It is not just a pipe dream. 

Use Followed By All to create a cohesive and disciplined organization where everyone is on the same page and executing efficiently. Remember, structure creates freedom. Structure also frees creativity. Structure lies in your processes.