Functional or operational maturity is an important part of a business running smoothly, efficiently and successfully. Evaluating processes for weak spots or areas of cross-functional friction can surface opportunities to improve work experience (and performance) for team members and the organization at large.
When assessing functional maturity, focus on processes that your team owns or participates in heavily as they will have the most impact. This is a great activity to do as a group with your team members and hear different perspectives on what is, and isn’t working.
It’s also valuable to get external feedback from other groups on their assessment of your team’s operational maturity levels.
What is the current level of operational maturity?
Which processes should be evaluated?
What would be the cost/benefit of investing in elevating low level areas?
What are the priorities?
What is the current level of your operational maturity by function?
We’ve listed the key characteristics in levels below to help you identify where each function in your organisation sits. When assessing your functional maturity level, break your organisation into functions (eg: Marketing, Engineering, Sales) and talk through the specific processes each function has with your team. Remember to try and be objective.
Which processes across your organization should be evaluated? Identify the processes that members of your team spend a ‘High’ amount of time on (6 hrs/week or more) or that involve multiple team members.
The first step is for each leader to compile a comprehensive list of their team’s responsibilities, output, and average time spent on each activity. Get some internal validation with the team and invite them to add to the list.
Example:
This can be a heavy lift for teams to complete, but there are organizational SaaS tools that exist to help make this exercise easy and fast, Functionly being one of them.
What are the cost/benefits of investing in elevating processes? Take a look at each function’s identified processes to evaluate, and answer the following:
What are the priorities that need to be addressed first? Use your cost/benefit analysis to determine:
Once the priorities are in place, you and your team will be able to create an action plan that enables your organization to start elevating each function’s effectiveness, and your overall operational maturity.
If you’re a Functionly user, we’ve created a handy digital guide to get you on your way. Print it out or send it to each team leader and simply follow the outlined steps.
Read more about workforce planning.
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