Tag Archive: business process improvement

The Structure That Lets You Be Flexible

structure

Last week I had a consultation meeting with a potential new client. They are a digital marketing agency, and are the epitome of funky, professional, fun, and creative. I very much enjoyed my conversation with them, as I always do when learning about a new (to me) industry.

Consultation discussions always start out casually with the usual small talk and commentary on what is going on around us (this group works in a shared creative work space, and the energy is palpable). As often happens with people who are interesting and interested, the conversation morphed naturally into questions and answers about what they do and where they want to grow and how Whiteboard can help.

This client came to us via a referral from a previous client. As such, they already knew a bit about what we do, and yet they still weren’t sure what we could or would do for them. They just knew they needed us. Why? Because they wanted to build the processes they needed before they needed them.

I thought this was genius, and through the course of our conversation a phrase came up that I’ve already reused a half dozen times since then. “We want to have fun,” they said. “Our clients have to see us having fun. So I guess we are afraid that processes will limit our ability to be flexible and have fun.” I responded, “so what you want is the structure that will let you have the fun.”

“YES!” they replied, smiling as if to say, “By George, I think she’s got it!”

This idea of flexible structure is an important one for all businesses of all sizes, and particularly those that are on the tipping point of growing to a new level.

What’s a Process Again?

First let’s revisit the concept of a business process. Essentially, everything that you do with some repeatability is a process. At a high level it may involve things like this:

  • Sales
  • Developing a quote or proposal
  • Establishing scope or business requirements
  • Project management
  • Customer service
  • Invoicing

You may not think you have a process. Perhaps you are a small or medium organization for which things happen organically. Maybe everyone does everything and does it their own way, and it’s working out just fine, thank you very much. But guess what? There is a process. There are many processes, and they are all different and they all accomplish the same thing slightly differently.

This is usually just fine for a while. Because it’s a small team, you can roll back your chair and shout down the hallway to your partner and solve issues easily. Customers know you all by name, and although things go wrong once in a while it’s no big deal because someone is always able to fix it.

But here’s the thing. Before you know it, this will NOT be ok. You will hit a tipping point in your growth, and suddenly things will be confusing and chaotic and you’ll be stepping on each other’s toes. You won’t be able to outsource anything because the roles and responsibilities you have defined (or not defined) are unclear and difficult to chunk out into trainable units. You won’t have clear expectations for outcomes, customers will start getting annoyed, and you will be limited in how fast you can grow because you simply can’t handle everything on your own anymore.

This is when the structure becomes important.

By taking the time before you hit that tipping point, you will set yourself up with just the right amount of structure to ensure you present yourself as clear and capable, while remaining flexible enough to grow, change your minds, and yes, have fun.

How to Define Your Structure

The structure I’m talking about does not involve your org chart, and does not require a huge amount of work. Rather, it involves three things:

  1. Goals and priorities: Take the time to define your Mission & Vision statements, and settle on your goals for the coming period. You may have this locked down in your own mind, and it’s just as important to ensure it’s documented and visible for others so they know what they are trying to impact.
  2. Roles & responsibilities: Document the various roles in your organization. This doesn’t mean write down what everyone does (e.g. Ruth handles the sales process). Rather, it means document the person-agnostic roles that are required to run the business well. (e.g. Business Development, Outside Sales, Project Manager, Customer Service) One person can of course do more than one role, but the roles must be distinct.
  3. Key Corporate Processes: Note the key processes that your organization needs, and that must be done in a certain way in order to achieve a quality outcome? This definition allows you to outsource and train new people to a given standard. It also allows you to modify and be flexible as needs require – a process is just written on paper. It can always be changed!

Once you’ve set out your goals, roles and process expectations, you’re ready to grow. Everyone knows what needs to happen and (perhaps more importantly) HOW it needs to happen. Standards are clear and timelines are defined. You have structure, and you also have the option of changing that structure as required. Why? Because good processes are flexible.

Until next time,

Ruth.

Business Process What Now?

process3Picture a business networking dinner, wherein each participant gives an overview of their business, including target market, main products/services, and current concerns. You’ve been listening to some of the dozen or so professionals give concise overviews, and are taking notes – keenly interested in connecting with one or two (using Nicole’s Networking Advice), and thinking you might have some good feedback for a few others. Then it’s your turn, and you stand and give the “elevator pitch” you’ve honed to a thing of beauty. And… people look at you like you have two heads.

That has happened to both Nicole and me in recent weeks, and we were quite taken off guard! We thought we had worked hard to describe what we do (business process improvement) in a way that is easy to “get.” And we have, for the most part – just not in the elevator pitch (2-3 sentences) format that is crucial in networking events and casual conversation.

Clearly it’s something we need to work on.

One of the things that is so interesting to us, and has been since we started this business, is the varying degree of understanding (or lack thereof) of what “business process improvement” is. Being a process geek myself, I assume everyone is constantly thinking how they would improve things, and therefore inherently “gets” what business process improvement is. Not so!

Let’s start by defining a couple of terms:

process1A process can be defined as a series of actions or steps that are undertaken in order to achieve a particular outcome. Some common examples that may resonate with you – think of the steps that are involved in each:

  • going through security screening at the airport
  • filling out your year-end tax forms
  • getting ready to leave the house each morning
  • making a martini or a latte
  • grocery shopping

When we say “business” process, we are referring to processes that happen every day at work in order to achieve a specific outcome. Do these sound familiar?

  • recruitmentprocess 2
  • performance evaluations
  • business expense claims
  • invoicing
  • customer service
  • production
  • strategic planning
  • approvals
  • scheduling

Each of these (and dozens of others) happens every single day in most businesses, and if you’re lucky, they are smooth and efficient and wonderful and everything goes well all of the time and all your employees and customers are happy with them.

No? Well then.

If one of your business processes is somewhat less than perfect and causes you grief, if you go home on Friday night and think, “if only we didn’t have to do THAT thing,” if you get feedback from your customers that they are sick of having to do the same thing over and over with the same (unsatisfactory) results – well then my friend, you have a business process problem that needs improving.

Or, if you have an outcome or metric that is not performing as well as it should be, most likely there is a broken business process in there somewhere, and you need to figure out which one it is, uncover it, and fix it without adversely affecting any of the other processes that it impacts.

There are many ways to approach business process improvement – ours is one that focuses on engagement and leadership skills as a means of making improvements “stick.” It’s different than other more rigid methodologies, yet it uses elements from several of the most popular, including Six Sigma, Lean, Appreciative Inquiry, and Methods Time Measurement. We like to be professional and fun at the same time, and show people what business process improvement is, how it works, and how it can make their organizations better, faster, and cheaper.

Got it? Excellent. Now we just need to get that into an elevator pitch. Any suggestions? Tell us in the comments below!

Until next time,

Ruth.

Guest Blog Post – OMG! Emotions in the Office!

linda hillsLinda Hills is a seasoned Learning & Organizational Development practitioner whose mission is to help leaders, teams and organizations create emotionally intelligent transformational change. Over the past 20 years, she has designed, developed and delivered learning and organizational development interventions while working in software, financial services and the not-for-profit sector. Linda has a Master’s degree in Adult Learning and is a certified Emotional Intelligence, and Vital Signs Assessor with Six Seconds, a certified Change Practitioner through Connor Partners CIBC program, and is also certified as a Strengths Deployment Inventory (SDI) Facilitator/Coach.  She is currently an Executive Director in the not-for profit sector, leading her organization through an emotionally intelligent transformational change.

Linda will be offering The Six Seconds Emotional Intelligence Assessment (SEI™) at our upcoming course, Leading Process Change, in Toronto Nov 5 & 6. Find out more about that and about Linda HERE.

Linda over to you:

 

OMG! Emotions in the Office!

I’m with Linda North on this one:  Process isn’t my favourite thing.  But there are two other words in the title of Ruth and Nicole’s upcoming course (Leading Process Change) that strike a chord with me:  leading and change.  Why?  Because both of these concepts are deeply rooted in human emotion, and helping people build emotional intelligence is my “raison d’etre”.

We first heard the term “emotional intelligence” in 1995, when Daniel Goleman wrote his groundbreaking book of the same name.  Since then, much has been written, many versions of it have come along, and yet it remains largely conceptual, if not absent, in most organizations.  Emotions are still seen as soft and disruptive, and are unwelcome in a professional environment.

And yet therein lies a critical misunderstanding about emotions.  In a work setting the word conjures up images of someone losing their temper and yelling at colleagues, or storming out of a meeting.  These are perfect examples of emotions that have not been managed, and that fuel the aversion to them.  So in the business world, we prefer to “leave emotions out of it”.

This couldn’t be more wrong!   Emotions are assets.  They give us information and energy1. Not to mention they are automatic and pretty hard to hide2 (even when you think you are doing so masterfully, that twitching eyebrow gives you away :).  Think about fear for a moment.  It is seen as a negative emotion, but what is it telling you?   If you guessed that it’s telling you that soEmotional Intelligence Imagemething could go wrong, you’d be right.  And how might that be a good thing?  It can protect you from dangerous situations.

So what is emotional intelligence?  The model I use was developed by Six Seconds, so named after the amount of time it takes for the chemical reaction in our brains to settle down after we react to something.  The model comprises eight competencies that allow us to use thinking AND feeling to make optimal decisions.   These eight competencies are divided into three main categories:

  1. Know Yourself:  This is about awareness.  It’s being aware of your emotions, and recognizing the patterns of behaviour that they produce
  2. Choose yourself:  This is about management.  It’s navigating your emotions, thinking about the consequences of your actions and behaviours, exercising optimism and engaging internal (vs. external) motivation.
  3. Give yourself:  This is about direction.  It’s developing empathy for others, and pursuing a “noble goal” – a purpose greater than yourself.

These are easier said than done!  It takes reflection and effort to build these competencies, but they can all be learned!

If you aren’t sold on emotional intelligence, consider this:

  • Harvard Business Review called it the “key to professional success”3
  • Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella says that “…in the long-run, EQ trumps IQ…”4
  • At the US Army Training Centre, the saying is that “…Leadership is a lifelong journey of just 18 inches – from head to heart…”5

And if that isn’t enough, take a look at the bottom line stats:  when leaders practice emotional intelligence the impact on outcomes is clear; it is predictive of6:

  • 46% of Customer Service
  • 28% of Performance
  • 45% of Retention

With the last Gallup Engagement survey (2013) showing that 63% of employees worldwide are not engaged, and 24% actively disengaged7, it’s time for leaders to up their game.  And that means developing EQ to (at a minimum!) match their IQ.

Looking forward to seeing you on November 6th!

Linda

 

References

1At the Heart of Leadership:  How to Get Results with Emotional Intelligence, Joshua Freedman, Six Seconds, San Mateo, California, 2007

2Vital Organization Field Guide, Joshua Freedman and Massimiliano Ghini, September 2014

3 HBR “Breakthrough Ideas for Tomorrow’s Business Agenda,” April 2003

4 Times of India, “Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella tells students, fall in love with what you do,” October 1, 2014

5 The Vital Organization Field Guide, Joshua Freedman and Massimiliano Ghini, September 2014

6At the Heart of Leadership:  How to Get Results with Emotional Intelligence, Joshua Freedman, Six Seconds, San Mateo, California, 2007.

7 http://www.gallup.com/poll/165269/worldwide-employees-engaged-work.aspx, retrieved October 22, 2014.

You Should Come to This Course. Yes, You.

Leading-Process-Change

Our regular readers will know by now that Nicole and I are upbeat, positive people and we get excited about a lot of things. So, when I tell you that we are SUPER EXCITED about our upcoming course in November, please trust that it is not hyperbole.

Why are we so over-the-top and ridiculously excited?

Well, because we believe this course is innovative, and innovation is a good, positive, wonderful thing.

You’ve heard us talk about The Whiteboard Way© before (click here or here). We believe that our method of Process Improvement is what organizations need in order to take the first step into a Process Improvement culture. Often organizations hear about the buzz words – continuous improvement, process improvement, Six Sigma, Lean Six Sigma, TQM, etc – and they go bananas implementing a new program.

And so many of them fail. I’ve seen it happen in three major organizations in both the private and the public sectors.

They fail because they haven’t set themselves up to succeed – they have not considered the importance of change management, culture shift, and stakeholder engagement. It’s as bad as if someone all of a sudden decided they want to be a farmer, and so they bought a big field and started sticking seeds in the ground, without tilling the soil, removing rocks, adding fertilizer, and ensuring the earth is rich and ready to receive the seeds.

Enough of the analogy. You get what I’m saying, and hopefully many of you are nodding your heads and saying, “yup – been there, done that.”

Our new course, Leading Process Change, offered Nov 5 & 6 in Toronto, examines the intersection of Process Improvement and Leadership Principles and enables the learner to influence change and develop a process-based culture. Everyone can benefit from this course, especially if they are responsible for, or thinking about, process improvement in their organization. (Click to Tweet)

You need to come to this course. Yes, you.

What? You don’t think you’re at the right level in your organization to attend? To that I say, pfftrespectfully, PFFT.

Whether you are an employee on a team in an organization who wishes you knew how to influence change so people would listen to your ideas, or a VP trying to figure out why you can’t make process improvements stick, (or somewhere in between), this course is for you.

We have designed the course in two modules, so that people can come to one or both.

  • Module 1 – is all about The Whiteboard Way©, and focuses on the basics of Process Improvement without getting all fancy shmancy and needing expensive software or textbooks.
  • Module 2 – examines essential skills in making sure that change sticks. We have expert speakers on how to communicate & promote your change initiative, how to work process improvement into your strategic planning, and how to be aware of your own emotional intelligence and its impacts on others.

More information is here in this link. I encourage you to read it, and then sign up and bring anyone else who needs to be there (which is everyone, so…). We have discounts for Earlybirds (before October 18th), former students, members of BNI or Verity, and employees of the OPS. And discounts can be combined!

I hope to see you at our course. I promise it will be fun – our past students have rated our training consistently in the top box! (Oh, and the lunch will be fantastic!)

Ruth.

PS – if you have any questions, just shoot us an email at info@whiteboardconsulting.ca/staging.

How To Solve The Biggest Problems With Process Mapping

Post-Process Mapping

A few weeks back Ruth blogged about how to do a basic process map (click here to check it out) and it included a free process template for you to use as well. You’re welcome.  Process mapping is a huge part of our business. We know process mapping creates engagement and buy-in for process change  (when done in a workshop setting) , is a great visual tool, and can improve effectiveness and efficiency.

whiteboardconsulting.ca/staging: Peacocks and ProcessesRuth talked about the key steps in documenting a process; the steps include:

  1. Determine the swimlanes
  2. Determine the trigger point
  3. Consider the end point
  4. Put a circle shape in the swimlane for the person/group that starts things off. Write the word “START” in it.
  5. Put a square shape next to the circle and label it #1, and write the step.
  6. Proceed with each consecutive step.
  7. Add the arrows last (you almost always have to change them as you go).
  8. When you reach the end point, put a circle with the word “END” in it.

AND, I can’t believe Ruth forgot this.  I am going to gloat since she is a stickler for this one.

9. NUMBER your steps (post-production comment from Ruth – I am mortified! I can NOT BELIEVE I forgot that… and is such a public way! I will never live it down. Sigh.)

We received a lot of really good feedback on this blog, and people loved the template.  The big question was:

What do I do next, after the Process Map?what-next

Great question.  The next 2 steps are to validate your process map and look at value added steps.

Validation

So if you’ve done your process map in a workshop style setting, you likely had many of the stakeholders (the swimlanes) of the process in the room.  So validation in this case is finalizing that process map and sending it back out to those participants to see if what you’ve documented is accurate.

If you’ve worked on a process map by yourself,  validation becomes even more important. You are verifying that all the steps are accurate and represented properly. In fact, this is an opportune time to re-group and re-engage to validate the map, or engage for the first time.  A few things to keep in mind:

  • Talk to the people in the process and follow the product or service through the service to make sure steps and swimlanes have been captured accurately.
  • Make sure to capture easily seen or invisible steps (i.e. where the product or service is waiting, or being moved to another area)
  • Ensure that you haven’t mapped the best case scenario, or worst case scenario.  The map should be representative of how the process normally works.

Now for the meaty stuff….

Next we are going to analyze the process! First let’s determine whether a step adds value or not? Ask these 3 questions:

  1. Does the customer consider this step important?
  2. Has the product or service had a physical change?
  3. Was it done right the first time?

Here you can identify the type of non-value added activities. Non-value added activities include:value-added-non-value-added

  • Moves: Steps in the process where the product or service is in transit from one place to another. How many times and to how many people in your organization does this touch?
  • Delays: Steps in the process where the product of service is waiting for the next step in the process (a great example of this is approvals or sign-offs). This is your classic bottleneck.  
  • Set-up: Steps in the process that prepare the product or services for a future step
  • Internal Failures: Steps that have to be re-done (i.e. iterations of something before it reaches final approval) that are detected internally
  • External Failures: Steps that have to be re-done that are detected by the customer (i.e. damaged product at shipping….)
  • Control/inspection: Steps where the product or services is reviewed to ensure customer satisfaction (i.e. Quality Control)
  • Value Enabling: Steps that don’t add value but are necessary for the functioning of the organization

How do you do this? Well by filling out the super easy Process Summary Analysis Template of course!

Process Summary Analysis Template Instructions

Step 1: Put in the number of process Steps

Step 2: Enter the amount of time it takes to complete this step in minutes (don’t know exactly? Time it a few times or guesstimate for now), sum that row in minutes, and its % is 100% because we are summing the whole process.

Step 3: Identify which process steps are value added and not value added. Sum the number of minutes for all the boxes that you’ve identified (in this case we have an x in step 1 and step 6 at 1 minute and 5 minutes respectively, so we have 6 minutes of value added work and 75 minutes of non-value added work).

Step 4: For those steps that are not-value added, identify what the type of non-value added activity it is.

Step 5: Assess the percentages, and start working on the biggest first.  In this case 56% of the non-value added steps are due to External Failures.

Screen Shot 2014-09-19 at 9.48.28 AM

That should keep you all busy for a little while!

Ruthie…I guess this means you have to give our readers some Cause-Effect Diagram templates next week. You’re welcome. 🙂

Also stay tuned for more info about our new “Leading Process Change” Course!  Over the next few weeks you’ll see guest blogs from our speakers, more info on the course, and more templates I think!

What do you think of this template? Did you use it? Was it helpful?  Let us know at info@whiteboardconsulting.ca/staging or Tweet us at @whiteboardcons! More questions for us?  Use #DearRuthandNicole!

Until Next Time,

Nicole

 

Beginners Guide: Using Appreciative Inquiry for Process Improvement

This week, as I finish my certification process in Appreciative Inquiry (AI), I thought I’d give our readers a little understanding of how we’ve used AI and applied it to our process work.

Our  process background has led us to focus on gap assessment and gap analysis as a primary methodology for seeking process improvements and identifying opportunities for improvement.  Our facilitation methodology was usually centered around questions like: “What is your pain point?” Or “What is the one thing you would change?” Or “What would make things better?”

This type of gap assessment methodology is highly successful and works extremely well in organizations that:

  • Have a strong (positive) organizational culture
  • Are accustomed to process improvement or are seeking it out
  • Have process aptitude or orientation
  • Are resilient to change

We’ve applied the AI methodology to our Process Improvement Part One and Part Two courses (part of the Whiteboard University Curriculum that we’ll be offering this fall).  Our Whiteboard Way teaches the following concepts:

  1. Define It! Learn to develop a problem statement to effectively describe a potential process improvement project.
  2. Draw It! Use basic process mapping tools to graphically represent the process at hand and begin to identify possible areas for bottlenecks, duplication of effort, or unclear roles and responsibilities.
  3. Imagine It! Use tools like a fishbone diagram to effectively search for root causes, and thus possible solutions to the problem identified in step 1.
  4. Prove It! Use data to demonstrate how the improved process could be measured against current performance.
  5. Talk About It! Effectively communicate process changes throughout the organization to support uptake of the new process and manage progress throughout.

We applied AI methodology (and Summit framework) in the following 2 steps of the Whiteboard Way:

Screen Shot 2014-07-24 at 11.07.37 AMTools We Use

Opportunity Map

Following an exercise to identify problem statements from a number of groups, the problem statements are collected and documented on a whiteboard. Process improvement project problem statements are then reframed  in the positive using AI methodology to talk about the ideal process or ideal experience to generate future state discussions that feature best-in-class processes.

Using multicoloured dots, individuals from each table group are able walk to the whiteboard and “vote with their feet”  on the top 3-4 projects that are of most interest to each individual.  The top 3-4 winning projects are then spaced around the room and participants are asked to join the project that is of most interest or that the participant feels could provide the most value from a knowledge perspective. For the most part teams naturally tend to be naturally evenly distributed, but wherever necessary shift to create somewhat equal participation between groups.

Using the opportunity map creates a great deal of engagement in the group. We have noticed that every person who joins a new project group has a vested interest in the outcome, and their excitement and engagement is palpable right away – versus teams being forced to work on pre-defined problem statements.

The re-shuffling of table groups based on working on the new problem statement of their choice truly helps to capture not only individual engagement, but the appropriate level of knowledge base within the group.

AI Questions/Reframing

In order to facilitate the Imagine It! portion, we first use traditional process improvement methodology using a fishbone diagram to determine possible root causes for the problem statement.  This is where traditional process improvement would end – what we do differently is ask them to then consider the possible root causes, and using AI question techniques begin to envision a future state for the problem.  The guided questions for each problem/opportunity statement are as follows:

  1. What is the current strength of this process?
  2. What are you proud of?
  3. Can you tell a story of when this process worked well?
  4. What are the key themes of success? (Using the Fishbone diagram as a guide: People, Processes, Materials, etc.)
  5. What does this process look like in one year, once it has been reengineered and is working effectively?
  6. What measures can we use to see how successful the new process is (versus the old process)?
  7. What things need to be done in order to get there?

The teams are then able to effectively leverage current components of the process that work the best, identify what needed to change, and what needs to happen in order to make that change.

Reflections on impact on participants

Using this new style of questioning is a fundamental change from classic process improvement.  Often during the Imagine phase there is a great deal of change resistance to changing the process, especially when certain parts appear to be working. Leveraging the parts of the process that work well allows that resistance to diminish significantly. The “pain points” and “what is the one thing you would change” conversation in a typical gap assessment tend to devolve into “personnel issues” rather than process issues. Often people determine that it in fact was not the process that was broken, but the owner of those process steps that is to blame for the variability in the outcome of the process.

The AI methodology  paired with gap analysis allows participants to steer clear of the negative, and focus on positive process improvements that are more fruitful than those that develop from pure process gap analysis alone (Click to Tweet).

Reflections on AI

While traditional gap assessment methodology is still a large component of process improvement initiatives, the use of AI is very effective when there is significant resistance to change or organizational culture issues that tend to draw negative conversations rather than opportunities.  This is completely normal for process improvement where users of a process experience the effects of the change curve, namely first disbelief in the efficacy of the methodology, anger possibly due to fear of the unknown or lack of skills to execute the newly developed process,

New questions or observations

It would be interesting to document a process improvement project that used AI exclusively as a methodology against one that used gap analysis to assess whether the improvements using AI could in fact yield better results.

Our opinion is that differing methods work for different individuals, so blending the two approaches meets the needs of all stakeholders and will yield the best possible approach to engage a wide variety of thinking styles and communication styles.

Want to know more about AI and process improvement?  Send us a note.  Have any interesting AI stories?  Join the conversation on Twitter @whiteboardcons.

Until next time,

Nicole

 

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