Smooth operator: simplify your operations and play to your strengths.

• Author: Lewis, Di
• Position: EntrepreneurEdge - Interview

Micro-startups and industry giants alike can benefit from running a tight ship. But the realm of operations can be intimidating for small business owners and entrepreneurs. We spoke with Niel Nickolaisen, CIO at Western Governors University, for a professional's perspective on operations.

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What are some foundational elements of operations?

In an operations role, one of my goals should be to simplify everything we do. Because the more complex our process, the more complex our product lines, the more complex our everything, the slower we will be, the more resources we will consume ... At the rate things move today, complexity kills you over time. It may not kill you immediately, but it will definitely kill you over time.

Another piece of advice would be learn enough, just enough, about Lean principles to apply them to everything you do. You don't have to be deep in Lean to make it work for you. One thing you have to know is the forms of waste. You need to know how to map a value stream and you need to know about standardized work. If you know those three things, you can improve 90 percent of everything you touch.

Just learn the basics and apply the basics. Maybe the basics won't help you with that really obscure problem you've got. That's fine. Solve the other 90 percent of the problems. Leave the obscure ones for later.

Can you give an example of this type of simplification?

I've got this really busy, active service desk. It supports both students and staff. Anybody with a problem calls the service desk. We categorize and record every request. We then get the entire team together and look at the most frequent issues. As a team we identify what we're going to do to get to the root cause of the issues.

Just think about if you do that every day for six months--you'd be dealing in month seven with issues that weren't even on your radar six months ago. Think about how much better your processes would be, how much happier your customers would be. These things that they used to have problems with, you don't have problems with anymore. Think about doing that across your entire enterprise. Do that for an entire year and you've transformed your entire operation.

What would you tell a younger company or entrepreneur who is trying to improve?

The leader of an organization must define and ingrain it into the culture what you're better at than anybody else. That's where you're going focus your innovation. A lot of times businesses...