Process improvement can feel overwhelming. Where do you begin? What should you tackle first? The reassuring truth is this: It doesn’t have to be complicated. Let me share a recent example.
Like many organizations, we have a mostly remote workforce and rely heavily on Microsoft Teams for communication. Beyond one-to-one messaging, we use team-based group chats to stay connected and create a space where anyone can ask questions and get timely support.
Recently, a team member posted a quick note in the chat to say they were tied up on a long call, helping someone with an online access issue. It was meant as a heads-up that they’d be unavailable for other calls.
Normally, a comment like that would come and go without further discussion. Long tech-support calls aren’t unusual.
But this time was different.
In real time, I watched the team’s manager ask a simple, but powerful question:
“For these types of calls, assuming the person is online and working on it, is there anything we can add to the site that would help some of these users, so they won’t feel like they need us on the phone?”
One simple question.
And sometimes, simple questions spark the biggest breakthroughs.
What followed in the chat was an outpouring of ideas from the team:
- Clearer wording or instructions when users try to make a purchase or add a bank account
- Improvements to help people locate the withdrawal section more easily
- A guided “wizard” with definitions of key terms
- Real-time indicators showing which password requirements have or have not been met
The manager kept the conversation going with thoughtful follow-up questions like, “What verbiage would you like to see instead?” and “How would you imagine this would look on the site?”
By the end of the discussion, joined by several team members beyond the person who posted the initial comment, the manager thanked everyone and encouraged them to submit their ideas to our uIMPROVE suggestion portal so our technology team could evaluate them.
What made this moment stand out?
We often encourage staff to submit process improvement ideas, but this time, the spark came from a leader who noticed, engaged and got curious about something small. It would have been very easy to overlook the Teams message. That curiosity turned an everyday update into a meaningful conversation that energized the team and surfaced ideas that had been sitting quietly in their minds.
Process improvement does not have to be dramatic.
It doesn’t need to flip a system upside down.
Sometimes, it begins with a simple question, asked at the right time.
So, the next time someone mentions a long call, or says a task is taking too much time, pause…and ask questions. Be curious. You might just discover an opportunity to improve your business and remind your team that their experiences matter.