An Operational Health Check is a process to find out how you're doing operationally as a business, locate process pain, and figure out a plan to remedy it. 

It’s always the first step to get a clear picture of what is going on in the business.

Tailored for you

An Operational Health Check can be tailored to be as short or as long as you need depending on the size of your business or the acuteness of your process pain.

What's involved in the Health Check?

I work with each team to understand what work they deliver, how they do it, what process pain they feel already today and why it's happening (e.g. too many steps, missing coordination or communication points, no formal process in place, process is too infrequent to remember how it works, no documentation). This on-the-ground user research is the foundation.

Part of the purpose of the exercise is to get me up-to-speed on the detail of how work gets done around the business. The other part is to get the teams to articulate how things work which naturally surfaces issues, process pain, and blockages as well as stimulates creative problem-solving.

From there, I workshop with the teams on process improvements across specific areas to figure out how to get rid of process pain and/or identify new or missing processes.

From the work done with the teams, I synthesize all the information into a strategic and tactical report which includes:

• All findings and recommendations, having validated them with the impacted teams to confirm it reflects what we identified as process improvements (including processes we can stop doing!) and technology or equipment improvements or needed investments

• Recommendations for teams or individuals who would benefit from more targeted, one-to-one mentoring in management, project management, process improvement/analysis, operational strategic planning and project leadership

We make a plan, and get going

After delivering the Operational Health Check, we develop a roadmap together and identify resources across the business to do the work that’s prioritized: organizational change, learning and development, process change, and technological implementations. 

The plan will put in place any operational structures, processes, training and tools we need to get you ready to handle the growth you want.

I will help your leaders and teams become more operationally savvy.

Guidance

If you want to take the report findings and roadmap to drive the transition with your own teams, I can support you from a distance mentoring key people as much or as little as you need. 

You can use me as an advisor, a sounding-board available for teams or individuals to access on a regular basis as they bump into problems or obstacles and need advice

Direct mentoring

I can also closely mentor and train specific people to fill skill gaps that other leaders might not have bandwidth or experience to support

My specialist area is any role focused on operational delivery, project management, change management, transitions and integrations, process analysis and workflow design, and general management. I can mentor individuals at every level of an organisation about how to approach problems, find solutions, and how to engage with people and build real working relationships that produce results. 

Embedded leadership

I know lots about delivering complicated, multi-faceted, global operational business transitions that require a mix of technology experience, change management, people management skills and project management.

If you need direct support to deliver your transition plan, I can be embedded within the organisation in a temporary leadership role, like an interim COO, or I can work in an interim role for the duration of a project or for just a piece of it such as in a Project Leader role.