At some point, businesses big or small will run into the issue of wasted time which, by extension, turns into wasted money. Usually, it’s a case of the business owner or a manager becoming too involved with tasks that ought to be delegated to others.

To address such cases, time analyses should be conducted to identify the issues, which should then be documented. This can be as simple as taking out a piece of paper and writing down your observations. Many small business owners, however, lack the time or inclination to do this.

Larger businesses, on the other hand, tend to have so much documentation piled up over the years that extracting the right solutions from this heap of information may become overwhelming. Even if they already have processes in place, other possible obstacles include adoption, usability, or effectiveness.

In either case, it may help to enlist the services of a third-party organization. FUEL it was created to tackle these common challenges faced by businesses of all sizes. We have interviewed company President Cindy Ogden on how her team may be able to help your business establish systems that address these challenges.

1) Why did you decide to specialize in process improvement?

I have a passion for organizational development and new technologies. During my early years in human resources, I was always keeping up with the latest technologies, with a particular focus on how they can improve employee performance. I decided to start my own business to help customers or clients come up with a permanent solution to fix their problems. We put processes in place for learning to happen which, by extension, will allow behavioral change. My Lean Six Sigma Black Belt training complements this because I was taught to think in terms of measuring performance.

2) How do you pinpoint the exact problem that your client’s organization has?

It all comes down to documentation. We first ask them if they have documented policies and standard operating procedures. Companies grow very quickly. At first, everyone is familiar with what the standards were; but as the company grows, the ideas gradually fade from memory because they haven’t been written down. People end up doing their own thing. I want to see the documentation of the workflows and expectations. If we don’t have that, we can’t expect employees to follow a process.

Additionally, think of your employees like customers. With that context in mind, think about what can make their jobs more efficient. This will help in formulating processes that take the human element into account.

3) Even with documentation and knowledge of the problem, we sometimes still have trouble diagnosing the cause of the problem. How do you deal with that?

The diagnosis is a checklist. If you think the problem has ten possible causes, you should ask the right questions that can guide you to the right answers. It can even be as simple as asking your customers to provide feedback that can answer those questions for you.

For companies that do have documentation in place that was built up over the years, information overload is a common issue. It’s hard to dig through it quickly to find the right solution, so there also has to be a review process in place. Without one, you can get outdated information as part of your knowledge base. You’ll be asking the wrong questions and, therefore, you’ll be getting the wrong answers. You need a dedicated group of people that can review information on, say, an annual basis, and updated processes based on synthesized information.

4) What can we learn from your worst mistake as an entrepreneur?

In the last few years, the biggest mistake I’ve made is poor planning from a budget standpoint: adding resources and being optimistic about jobs coming in, onboarding before I had ink on paper. All entrepreneurs have felt this pressure to make quick, often difficult, decisions. I had to come to a point where I needed to realize