How Camps Can Improve Results with Process Thinking
"Each year, the things we do become easier, better, and more consistent."
What are Camp Processes?
Camp leaders manage and synchronize many moving parts to run a successful camp: facilities, staffing, funding, programming, safety, marketing, and the list goes on. If we define a "process" as a sequence of steps that someone takes to achieve a desired outcome, then there are 200+ processes (with thousands of associated tasks and steps) needed to run your camp. Many of these repeat week after week and summer after summer.
For example, here are a few selected processes for a camp, by category:
Finance
- how to run payroll
- how to process A/R
- how to process A/P
- how to monitor cash flow
- how to receive and reconcile payments
- how to do monthly bookkeeping
- how to negotiate and renew insurance
Facilities
- how to clean cabins between sessions
- how to perform preventative maintenance on equipment
- how to winterize buildings
- how to maintain and repair plumbing systems
- how to maintain HVAC systems
Programs & Activities
- how to create the annual calendar
- how to invite speakers and special guests
- how to evaluate camper and parent satisfaction
- how to respond to a camper injury
Marketing
- how to perform website SEO
- how to send the email newsletter
- how to update the website and blog
- how to create promo video
- how to manage direct mail program
Governance
- how to report results to board / owners
- how to elect new board members
- how to conduct a board meeting
- how to manage the whistleblower program
- how to develop and maintain the strategic plan
Staffing
- how to recruit counselors
- how to onboard new staff
- how to terminate & offboard an employee
- how to manage contractors
- how to conduct performance reviews
What are Challenges for Camps?
Are you stronger in some areas but more disorganized in others?
Do you have a standard way to find improvement opportunities?
Without a standard way to catalog and manage your camp processes, you may have unanswered questions that turn into problems:
- How are processes completed? Are things done differently each time? Do we have to "reinvent the wheel?"
- What are expected outcomes? Are results below "excellent?" How do we measure success?
- Who runs the process? Does everyone know all the processes they have been assigned?
- When does each process need to be run? Are things sometimes late or forgotten? How do we make sure that everything gets done?
The ProcessBucket Solution
Here are seven things you can accomplish with ProcessBucket:
1. Maximize your existing software
Use your existing software tools better and faster by describing the best steps and routines to run your software. This software could include your camp management system, accounting system, and your content management system. While these systems are huge time-savers, you still to "care and feed" for these applications by configuring templates, inputting data, performing analysis, and learning new features. All of this extra, valuable knowledge can be stored in ProcessBucket.
And when you have visibility into all the processes that these systems support, you can find areas to automate and areas where you could be using your current software more fully. You can common needs across your back office that you can solve with your existing software (e.g., automation, forms, workflow). If your existing software does not meet all your current needs, you can specify the they of new tool that's needed to fill gaps or speed up manual processes.
3. See all your processes in one place
Get a bird's eye view of all your processes so you can make strategic choices about what you improve and when.
Find your highest impact processes (e.g., the 20% of what you do that contributes 80% of your results) that are ripe for improvement. These processes can be labeled in ProcessBucket as high priority. Then evaluate all these high priority processes in a single view and further refine your improvement plans.
Tag and label "low hanging fruit" such as manual processes, paper processes, and "from memory" processes that can be quickly documented or automated.
Spot gaps that may exist at the operation level, or at higher levels such as analysis, planning, and strategy. Choose the processes which ones to track and improve.
4. Organize your documentation.
Create How-to Guides that link to their corresponding processes. Give everyone access to these How-to Guides so they can quickly follow the instructions without having to hunt through out-of-date manuals.
5. Clarify roles
Allow everyone to participate in making things better by providing new ideas. By making work visible, everyone can find small changes that allow them to get their work done more easily.
The Results
With complete visibility into all the processes performed by each role, a camp can see benefits from increased revenue, reduced costs, and lower risk.
More revenue
♦ More prospective families. Define, analyze, and refine your lead generation process to increase the number of inquiries and registrations.
♦ New projects. Develop processes for capturing ideas for new services, products, or premium experiences.
♦ Better utilization. Determine the constraints that are preventing full utilization of your facilities or resources. Create or refine processes to loosen the constraints or to optimize revenue within a fixed constraint.
Lower costs
♦ Shared skills. Multiple staff members can "divide and conquer" larger projects since there is a standard playbook for how to complete these processes. This approach balances the workload, removes unevenness, maximizes staff utilization, increases consistency, and lowers labor costs.
♦ Faster forms. Create a catalog of every form and move those online, thereby increasing speed and reducing the cost of handling paper.
♦ Streamline approvals. Link every required approval to the corresponding process. Eliminate unnecessary approvals to save time. Label other approvals as candidates for workflow automation.
♦ Appropriate apps. Evaluate each piece of software based on how well it supports an existing process. Add low-cost apps as needed to simplify operations. Eliminate apps with high cost and high risk, replacing these with new components that are tightly integrated into the core applications.
♦ Faster training. Since each Role now has a list of all its assigned processes, it takes just seconds to find a list of everything that someone in that Role should be working on. Each Role also has a list of all the upcoming tasks based on the processes assigned to that Role.
Less Risk
♦ Stranded knowledge. The valuable knowledge and techniques of the most experienced staff members can now be shared, refined, and standardized.
♦ Trackable tasks. Every recurring task is calendared and tracked, based on the schedule of its parent process. Now there is less risk of missing an important deadline.
♦ Known vulnerabilities. Now that every process has been identified, described, and cataloged, they can see all the single-points-of-failure and take steps to mitigate the risk of each of those critical processes.
Looking Ahead
With a complete catalog of all its processes, a camp can create a "to-do list" of specific ways to improve and drive better results for its campers, families, staff, and owners. In the months and years to come, the camp can set clear objectives for becoming leaner and develop a culture of continuous improvement:
Sample Potential Process Improvement Projects that can be uncovered by ProcessBucket:
- focus marketing efforts based on what's working and what's not
- automate repetitive processes
- remove overlap and refine best practices based on the processes owned by the camp's experts
- capture staff and customer feedback in a more systematic way
- move selected tasks to online and mobile
- upgrade specific core software components
- add analytics and AI tools to increase revenue