Streamline Your Operations Vs Micromanaging

For today’s proven management solution, I want to talk to childcare business owners about how to streamline your operations so that you’re not micromanaging everyone on your team. So be sure to read this blog.

Most of you don’t have a proper streamlined process for your classrooms, which is your foundation. And because of that, you are all over the place when it comes to who’s doing what in your organization.

So let’s talk today about the power of streamlining. Although it may feel like micromanagement,  skilled CEOs understand it’s not micromanagement, but it’s what we call streamlining.

So when I came into the scenario, I instructed my client and said, “Okay, I want you to pull job descriptions, and I want you to pull the tool that we use to streamline operations.”  So for the sake of understanding what this tool is, it’s a daily list because I believe that systems don’t lie. Your work will speak for you. 

So we give them this tool in the School of Systems that they can use to figure out the non-negotiables that each role has to do. So when I started reviewing from my perspective, in my experience that I’ve had with operating a streamlined company, I realized that there were some discrepancies in the task which was causing an overlap in responsibilities which caused nothing to get done because she thought they was, they thought she was. So now we have reached the point where we need to clarify those roles. To do that, here’s the lesson I taught. Hopefully, this lesson will help you too.

1. As the  CEO, you have to understand the process for every department in your organization. For example, Enrollment is a department; Marketing is a department;  Hiring is a department; Food program is a department; Kitchen is a department; Classroom is a department; Director Task is a department; and Transportation is a department. You see, every department in your organization needs to have processes. that causes it to work. 

So now if you don’t understand that or what those processes are, then you won’t streamline with interconnected processes. You’re going to have this person doing this, that person doing that. And then everybody’s job is going to be kind of mixed in, and everybody’s gonna think they did it. And then they didn’t do it because they thought they did it.

So let’s talk about this process for enrollment. Enrollment requires attraction. You have to attract someone to your organization. Enrollment also requires inquiry. Somebody has to call or submit a form or walk through the door and say, “I want to enroll my child.” 

 The next step is a tour. Some of you may skip the tour and some of you may not. But that’s a part of the process. Some parents want to know where their children are going to be. And some parents have heard so many great things about you that it’s not necessary.  Either way, the tour is a part of the enrollment process. And then you have the next step, which is the registration or the actual enrollment that happens. And if it doesn’t happen, then there should be a follow-up because that’s what happens next. And then the next two is retention. Once a person joins your program you have to have systems for retention. 

And then last, you want to have a process for referral so that your marketing cycle continues. Now all of those processes are part of the enrollment department because you have to go through all of those processes for a person to become a registered student. However, if you don’t understand those processes and know what your company needs to have done in those processes, you may find yourself not streamlining. 

You may have your director doing one thing, your office person doing another thing, the kitchen doing another thing. I know that may sound crazy, but some people get people doing everything. But the moral of the story is you may have people doing multiple things in your enrollment process. Well, in all honesty, you need one person who’s handling it from an enrollment perspective from beginning to end. 

If you’re like my client who has multiple locations, you need someone whose total role is enrollment. So they’re dealing with everything that happens after a person finds out about them. So they’re dealing with the process of the inquiry, the tour, the registration, the follow-up, the retention, and the referral. 

So this is why it’s so important that you have a streamlined process. If you don’t understand your processes for each department, it’s going to be impossible for you to streamline. And you’re going to have a team that doesn’t have interconnected responsibilities. 

To sum it up, if you’ve never done this process before because you’re missing systems, be sure to join our free training webinar so that you can experience our education, our experience, and our background in helping owners to put the proper systems in place. No matter how many locations you have. 

As always remember, if you manage the childcare business that you love, you will love the childcare business that you manage.