[REPOST] Don't run your small business without logs

The service team was young and new. They were in charge of handling the day-to-day of preparing orders and shipping our great products out. I was busy drumming more business and I trusted the team for their loyalty and dedication. One morning, I noticed by a fluke that we had 3 problem orders back to back. That's a lot when you only ship out 7 a day. What had happened?

Or more importantly, how often was this happening? I didn't know. The team didn't know and accounts varied from one player to the next.  Memory is a peculiar thing when you realize you might have messed things up... The very next day, I set up a log for all orders going out. We needed to measure these to assess the situation. Like magic, things started to improve and we noticed additional benefits as well.

Here are the top 5 lessons learned from creating a log of our activities:

1. Accountability:
   As soon as the log was setup, a new era was born for my small business: The era of accountability. My team logged, literally overnight, all orders with a set of indicators such as back order products, shipping mistakes or even invoicing errors. Team member were now accountable because we could easily calculate our "perfect order" ratio.
2. Transparency:
   This new log also created an open environment where we could publicly acknowledge our misgivings as a team. For example, we could see how rushing orders at the end of the day with all hands on deck was actually generating more errors, thus creating more dissatisfaction with our customers. The log's public transparency forced the team to discuss openly about the issues it reported.
3. Evolution:
   A few months into this logging, we started to see trends. Which days were busier, which products were problematically back ordered. That log was a witness to our growth and evolution. We would also track the impact of process changes as we improved our quality ratio. During our weekly team meeting, we would celebrate our improvements every week.
4. Control:
   As a small business owner, the work is fraught with opportunities and concerns. A sense of control in the area of order preparation greatly improved my sanity with regards to customer satisfaction. I knew that if we had more than 97% of our orders without any issue, that meant almost all of our customers would receive their order within 24 hours and as expected. I would take a peek at the log from time to time and be able to focus on other areas of the business.
5. Autonomy:
   The team also became much more autonomous in addressing issues tracked by that log. A clear sense of how we were doing in that area combined with the wish to do well pushed all of them to proactively prevent our log score from being damaged with errors and other misgivings. I rarely had to discuss the topic anymore since issues would be corrected quickly and future occurrences greatly minimized by the team.

While everyone's intention on the team was excellent, without a log, we had no idea if our efforts really paid off. Setting up a log instantly made the team accountable for the results, created an atmosphere of transparency where we could discuss issues highlighted and allowed us to look back from time to time to witness our growth and evolution. Finally, a sense of control emerged on my end while the team was acting more autonomously towards a better quality of service to our customers.

All of these gains because we started to enter 7-9 entries in a log every day. Imagine that.

What do you feel your team should log in your small business?

P.S. We use Smartsheet  for all our logging activities. If you would like me to write a more detailed post on how we actually do it, including automated notification and all, just comment or PM me and I will schedule a post just for that.

P.P.S. Don't be shy, just ask.

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If you liked this article, maybe you will like Sherpa's Small Business Method we use at Solpak to stay organized in our efforts.  Download it here for free.