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Most businesses lose time, margin and customers at the handovers nobody owns. Mena and I map the full customer journey, the backbone of systems and processes for business growth, then show how to assign owners and hunt down hidden waste.

• Every business runs on five stages: reach, sales, delivery, billing and after-sales care. Southwest Airlines’ 2022 meltdown shows what processes nobody can see end up costing
• Give each stage one directly responsible individual (Apple’s DRI idea) and a defined output. “The sales team looks after sales” isn’t an assignment; “sales ends with a signed proposal and deposit in hand” is
• Scaling usually breaks business operations at the handovers, not inside the stages. When one owner is accountable for each handover, the founder can stop doing everything in the business
• Toyota’s seven wastes are a useful lens for finding the steps your processes have outgrown, such as duplicate spreadsheets or chasing information that should arrive automatically

Chapters

00:00 - Zooming out from one process to the whole business
01:20 - Why you can’t fix a process you can’t see
03:27 - Southwest Airlines: what invisible processes cost
05:20 - The five-stage customer journey
07:09 - Airtasker: a journey designed end to end
09:06 - One owner and one defined output per stage
10:56 - Apple’s directly responsible individual
13:28 - When handovers fail: the bank promotion example
16:41 - Hunting waste: Toyota’s seven categories
19:52 - Auditing your core processes
22:49 - What to do next: four steps

References

• Ep 198: Trust is the real thing your customer is buying
• Ep 200, the customer advocacy episode
• Ep 201, the founder-as-hero episode

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