Fix the Process First: Business Process Improvement

Give business process improvement a clear starting point before committing to another platform.

A new website can make the next step easier for your customers. It needs a clear message first. A CRM can help a sales team follow a process, provided that team understands the process it wants to follow. Brad Griffith works at that intersection, helping organizations define the problem their technology needs to solve.

Watch or Listen: Business Process Improvement in Practice

Start Business Process Improvement Where the Work Slows Down

In this episode of the Catalytic Leadership® Podcast, “Fix the Process First: Business Process Improvement (with Brad Griffith),” I talk with Brad, founder and president of Buckeye Innovation, a strategic technology partner for purpose-driven organizations. His team builds websites and applications, with a particular interest in helping nonprofits and local governments close gaps in access.

His approach to business process improvement begins with a practical conversation about the organization’s mission and the limits it would encounter at ten times its current size. The answers reveal where a process needs attention. Technology can support that work once the team understands what it is trying to change.

Business process improvement also requires attention to how work moves. Brad describes value stream mapping as a way to trace a piece of information through a workflow. Look at how long it sits at each stage and what has to happen before it can move on. That makes a bottleneck much easier to see.

Give a Capable Agency Team a Process It Can Carry

This episode is useful for agency owners scaling past seven figures who are:

• Evaluating a new CRM or website and wanting to define the expected outcome before committing.
• Building dependable handoffs that keep moving when the founder is unavailable.
• Choosing which product features to develop first and which to leave for later.
• Helping team members develop the judgment to make more decisions independently.

Brad points out that founder dependencies can be deliberate or accidental. Redundancy helps everyone. A team member who can hand off work can take a vacation or move into a larger role without leaving a pile of stalled tasks behind.

Define the Outcome Before Replacing the Tool

When a client asks for a better website, Brad wants to understand what the site should help someone do. He describes a nonprofit that could name four specific actions it wanted visitors to take. That gave his team something concrete to improve. In other cases, the organization still needs to clarify its mission or messaging.

The same principle applies to a CRM. The team needs to understand its sales stages and the steps required to move from one to the next. Connecting more systems will not supply those decisions automatically.

Build Something Simple, Lovable, and Complete

Brad draws on Eric Ries’s discussion of validated learning in The Lean Startup. A smaller product can test an assumption and produce evidence from actual use. That evidence informs the next investment.

He also likes the SLC framework: simple, lovable, complete. A product can solve one specific problem well, feel satisfying to use, and do everything required for that focused purpose. Additional capabilities can follow. Waiting until eighteen features are ready increases the risk of building things people will never use.

Keep Responsibility for Culture as the Team Grows

Brad shares a difficult moment from his own business. While working to scale, he asked a subcommittee to finalize the company’s core values. The result helped him see that he needed to take responsibility for the culture he wanted to build.

He returned to the company’s purpose and made that mission a regular part of team conversations. Buckeye’s values are ingenuity, initiative, and collaboration. Team members call out examples in weekly meetings, giving those values meaning through everyday work.

A Catalytic Insight from Dr. William Attaway

Brad's description of the founder sitting inside a workflow stayed with me. A process can look organized on a screen and still stop every time it reaches your desk. You may have a capable team and a useful tool. If every meaningful decision waits for you, growth adds more work to the same stopping point.

I saw that pattern in my dad's advertising agency. He worked hard and taught me a great deal. Everything connected back to him, though, and when he was ready to step away, the business could not carry on independently. That experience shaped how I think about building a company that can keep serving people when its founder is absent.

Before you buy the next platform, choose one recurring workflow and walk through it with the people doing the work. Find the place where progress waits. If it waits for your approval, get specific about the judgment you are making there. Explain the standard. Give someone room to practice using it, with your support.

Brad also reminded me that you can delegate a great deal while keeping responsibility for culture. Your team needs to know what matters and see you reinforce it in ordinary decisions. A better system should make that clearer. This week, work on one handoff that could move without you. Stay close enough to help your people learn, and let them do the thinking.

Video Episode Highlights

These timestamps follow the source video. The podcast audio edition may include sponsor messages and use a different timeline.

• 00:00 Introducing Brad Griffith
• 01:16 An entrepreneurial family and the path to Buckeye
• 05:54 Technology that expands an organization's impact
• 09:16 Diagnose the process before buying software
• 11:59 Value stream mapping and founder dependencies
• 15:43 Clarify the outcome before replacing the website
• 19:22 Validated learning and simple, lovable, complete products
• 25:37 Taking ownership of company culture
• 31:40 Reinforcing core values in team meetings
• 33:46 Becoming a strategic growth partner
• 36:30 Peer support and empowering emerging leaders
• 40:35 Books and ways to connect

Resources and Books from the Episode

• The Lean Startup by Eric Ries
• Think Again by Adam Grant
• Atlas of the Heart by Brené Brown

Connect with Brad Griffith

Connect with Brad through the Buckeye Innovation website or on LinkedIn. He welcomes conversations about technology, organizational processes, and growing a service business. Visit Buckeye Innovation or connect with Brad on LinkedIn.