A practical Simplicating guide

Improve the process before you automate it.

Automation makes a task happen faster and more consistently. That helps most when the task itself deserves to be done.

Suppose a customer request passes through three approvals. Software could route all three in seconds. First ask why each approval exists. If only one changes the outcome, eliminating the other two may be the larger improvement.

Begin with the business outcome

Choose one recurring process and say what successful work would look like from the customer’s point of view. Leave product names aside for the moment. What would the customer know? What would the employee see? What would happen when something goes wrong?

Describe your “Perfect World”

Imagine the process without the limitations of the current spreadsheet or software. The point is to make a better outcome visible, then test what is feasible and worth paying for. Ask the employees closest to the work where delays, duplicate entry, and informal fixes occur.

Write the improved process as a story

Use plain language that a worker and a builder could both understand. For example:

When a customer accepts a quote, the job is created, the customer receives confirmation, the required materials are checked, and the assigned employee can see the relevant history without typing the customer details again.

That story states the outcome without prescribing a particular screen or product. It also makes a useful test for a software demonstration: can the tool support this process reliably at a sensible cost?

Remove, clarify, then automate

Remove: Which steps, approvals, and reports no longer serve a purpose?
Clarify: Who owns each decision and each important piece of information?
Test: Rehearse the improved process with a few real cases, including exceptions.
Automate: Use technology for the necessary repeated work that remains.

Try this today: Write a five-sentence story of how one customer request should move from start to finish. Ask an employee to mark every sentence that differs from the way work happens now. Choose one difference to test this week.

After the test, check whether the step actually disappeared or merely moved to another employee. Measure time, errors, and customer response before making the change permanent.

Adapted from the book’s “Perfect World,” business-story, automation, and measurement chapters.