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Key Takeaways Operational friction, not strategy, is often the real constraint on performance.
Sustainable change succeeds when teams help design, adopt and champion systems.
Ask any business leader what keeps them up at night, and they will likely cite challenges like market conditions, revenue growth, cost control or talent retention. But if you dig deeper, the root cause is often operational — issues around process, people, systems and serving clients.
Teams want to deliver gold-standard results, but they’re often hampered by manual processes and administrative friction. And those issues may silently grow and intensify until they begin to impact every aspect of the business.
I see this daily in veterinary medicine, where high burnout rates cost the sector upwards of $2 billion per year. It’s a challenging environment with long hours, stressful workloads and patients that can’t even tell you what’s wrong. But I’ve found that the best way to boost performance and even increase capacity with maxed-out teams is to address the underlying operational issues.
As a growth-focused CEO who has helped healthcare organizations transform their operations, I’ve seen firsthand how the right systems can alleviate some of the burden on overstretched teams. When you optimize workflows, standardize procedures and automate repeatable tasks, you create efficiency — and with it, the mental space for your team to focus on what they’re really passionate about.
Here are three steps to turn process friction into operational excellence, so you can unlock the full potential of your people and business.
1. Architect the change with your team, not for them
Studies show that less than one-third of organizational transformation projects succeed. That’s because change is hard. For me, managing the burden of transformation comes down to balancing the volume and speed at which it occurs — both factors that matter immensely when teams are already at their limits.
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