You walk into a convenience store at 7:00 AM, needing coffee before a critical meeting. The team member is stocking shelves, doesn’t look up, and offers no greeting. You wait. And wait.
Now imagine the same store where the process specifies and the team member: greets every customer within three seconds, makes eye contact, smiles, and says “Good morning, welcome in!” The difference isn’t magic. It’s process design and execution.
This is the gap between ordinary and extraordinary operations. Here’s what most executives don’t realize: you’re probably closer to extraordinary than you think.
The 75% Reality
Most companies already deliver correctly about 75%, or “most” of the time. Your team knows what to do. Your customers are mostly satisfied. But “most of the time” leaves 25% of your revenue on the table.
In surveys of over 5,000 service organization leaders, we asked: How much more revenue could your company generate if customers received your products and services 100% to brand standards, “every” time?
The most common answer? Twenty-five percent more revenue. Some estimated gains exceed 100%.
Benefits: Deliver your products and services 100% to your brand requirements every time and increase your revenue by 25% or more.
Cost: low initial cost with almost no ongoing costs.
It is one of the least risky and most straightforward ways to increase revenue.
The 15% Solution
Want to know how to get your products or services right every time, rather than most of the time, or need help doing it? This is what the McClaskey Excellence Institute does for our customers all the time.
The transformation from delivering your products and services right most of the time to every time doesn’t require a complete overhaul. It requires only a 15% change in how you document and implement your processes.
The knowledge to deliver at 100% already exists within your organization or you would not be getting it right most of the time. The problem isn’t your knowledge. It’s documentation and implementation.
Vague processes create “gray areas.” Instructions like “wipe the table clean” or “arrive on time” sound clear until ten employees interpret them in ten different ways. One person’s “clean table” has water streaks. For one team member, “on time” means five minutes early, while another thinks it’s OK to arrive 10 minutes past the scheduled time.
The 15% change eliminates the gray in your process documentation. Its writing processes are so clear that any trained employee achieves the same result every time. A 15% change in how you manage your team members shifts you from implementing your processes “mostly” right to implementing them exactly to your process “every” time.
When Lives Depend on Process Clarity
In Michigan intensive care units, central line-associated bloodstream infections were killing patients. The procedures existed but weren’t written with precision. Transforming the outcome only required a 15% change.
Hospitals implemented a five-step checklist: handwashing, using full-barrier precautions, cleaning the patient’s skin with chlorhexidine, avoiding femoral sites, and removing unnecessary catheters. Healthcare workers already knew these practices. Writing them into a mandatory checklist and implementing the checklist every time changed everything.
The results? A 66% reduction in infections over 18 months. An estimated 1,500 lives were saved. One hundred million dollars saved in Michigan alone.
That’s the power of the 15% change. The knowledge was there. What was missing was precision in documentation and a 100% execution environment.
From Good to Exceptional
K&N Management operated Rudy’s “Country Store” and Bar-B-Q, as well as Mighty Fine Burgers. When they committed to writing and executing processes to 100%, the transformation was dramatic. It only required a 15% change from what they were already doing. David McClaskey served as their consultant during that time and witnessed the process firsthand.
Rudy’s increased average unit sales from $3 million in 2000 to $7.5 million in 2010. Mighty Fine grew from $2 million in annual sales at launch to $3.5 million by 2010, more than triple its best competitor’s sales.
Customer satisfaction hit 4.7 out of 5, beating competitors. Over 95% of team members reported feeling proud to work there. The Austin American-Statesman named them “the best place to work in Austin.”
When you write processes to 100%, you don’t just increase revenue; you reduce employee frustration, eliminate rework, cut customer complaints, and create a workplace where people succeed.
The Real Cost of “Good Enough”
Back to that convenience store. When the greeting process says, “greet customers,” you get inconsistencies because those words can reasonably be interpreted in multiple ways. When it specifies, “greet every customer within three seconds, make and keep eye contact during the greeting, smile, and say ‘Good morning, welcome in,’ in a warm and upbeat tone,” there’s no room for interpretation.
That clarity in documentation and 100% execution eliminate errors, reduce the time supervision spends correcting mistakes, and empower employees by giving them a clear understanding of how to deliver excellence.
Accepting “most of the time” means you’re:
- Disappointing customers who expected consistency
- Frustrating employees who don’t know what “right” looks like
- Increasing turnover
- Creating more negative reviews
- Giving competitors an opening
- Spending more time fixing errors than preventing them
- Creating a lot of unnecessary hassle for team members and managers
Why the 15% Change Works
You’re not reinventing your business. You’re refining what works most of the time to what works all of the time.
Your processes deliver correctly 75% or most of the time. The foundation is solid. You need to identify gaps, remove gray areas, and write and execute with precision. Use behavioral terms instead of vague language. Specify what “clean” looks like. Define “on time.” Describe exactly how to greet a customer. Create an environment where 100% execution of the processes is the norm.
This isn’t micromanaging. It’s clarity. Clear processes free managers to focus on coaching instead of correcting mistakes. You give employees the gift of knowing they can succeed.
The Path Forward
Writing and executing processes to 100% is how you move from delivering what you promised most of the time to every time. When customers know they can count on you, they come back more often, recommend you to others, and choose you over competitors.
The 15% solution isn’t about working harder. It’s about working smarter. It’s capturing the knowledge that exists in your organization, documenting and executing it so clearly that excellence becomes the norm.
Your company likely has the knowledge to operate at 100%. The question is whether you’re willing to invest the 15% change to unlock that potential and capture the 25% revenue opportunity waiting for you. The process to do this exists. All you have to do is learn it and use it. We can show you how and help you do it.
The Achieving World-Class Results class teaches this proven process for writing and implementing processes to 100%. For more information, visit McClaskeyExcellence.com/AWCR or contact David McClaskey, President and Founder of the McClaskey Excellence Institute, at DavidMcClaskey@McClaskeyExcellence.com.
