10 Operational Excellence Best Practices

Here are ten Operational Best Practices to achieve Operational Excellence:

1. When you delegate, be superclear: not clear enough so that you can be understood, but clear enough so that you cannot be misunderstood.
2. After delegating, request your delegee to rephrase their understanding of the task.
3. Always make explicit which subtasks your delegee is fully accountable for. Example: you ask them to invite your top ten clients to the sales event. Are they also accountable for following up on the invitations? If so, make it explicit.
4. Always follow up before 25% of the time between a task is delegated and the deadline elapsed to check whether there’s been any misunderstanding.
5. Always, always acknowledge good work or call out subpar one. Never give the impression that you didn’t notice whether the delegated task was completed (and how well).
6. Have a one-on-one, even if short, with everyone on your team at least once a week.
7. During your one-on-ones, spend at least a couple of minutes discussing something non-urgent. For example, how are they feeling? What frustrates them? What could be made easier?
8. Audit someone’s work at least a few times a month, and when you do so, spend at least half of the time looking for something good (instead of just looking for the bad).
9. Have high standards. Communicate them superclearly. Follow up on them on a daily basis (yes).
10. Instead of looking for Excellence, look for improvements towards Excellence, and reinforce them every single time you spot them.

Note: I also published a book called  “Best Practices for Operational Excellence,”  where I cover this topic in much greater detail, listing more best practices, explaining how to execute them right, and providing a roadmap for implementation.