Commit your department to continuous improvement.

When your department does something well, learn from it so that you can replicate it in the future.
Want to differentiate your leadership capabilities from others? Become process-focused. That is, look at everything as a system that is designed and operating as intended, then it repeats itself.
Becoming process-focused can envelop you and can become a vast effort. Without getting overwhelmed by that, consider the baby steps that are involved and see some immediate payoff in productivity and decreased errors.
To do this, take these basic steps.

1. Identify what critical activities your department performs.

2. List those activities in sequential steps, with a beginning and an ending.

3. Name each as a process (give it a label).

4. Create a “T” chart with two areas of discussion – what is working, and what is not, one on each side of the “T”. Use this chart as a basis for getting employees involved. Problem solve. Track improvements. Reward wins. Feel the progress!

As you become more comfortable looking at your business area as a process, you can stretch by adding more activities.

For those of you that are advanced in process improvement, consider your critical processes and list them. Generally, they will evolve and change on their own over period of time, and need a re-look about every 12 months.