There is something intrinsically satisfying about a predictable outcome. Even our dog has routines, designed to get what she wants. At about 5pm every afternoon I get visited in my office by my furry friend, and she gives me the signal: she paws at my shoes, and if there is a spare pair of shoes lying around, she’ll move those around the floor with her snout. When this happens, there is no doubt in either her mind or mine that it is time for her afternoon ‘routine’ – a walk and all that it entails.
In business, having processes that produce predictable outcomes, is more important. Whether you are a professional pizza maker, or clean cars for a living, there is probably a sequence to the tasks you follow in performing your work to ensure you get the desired and predictable result, efficiently. (If you want to test this theory, next time you make pizza, try spreading the sauce around before you’ve made the pizza dough base!)
I’ve always been fascinated by processes. I think it’s the efficiency of a good process that I find attractive. In contrast, when I am subjected to a screwed-up, inefficient, ‘thought-up-by-an-idiot’ kind of process, it bugs me all day. (“Why can’t this be better?”). Have you ever been caught up in a healthcare process that had you chasing the doctors, administrators, pharmacists, receptionists, other doctors, and an insurance company? If you have, you’ll understand the meaning of words like ‘bad process’, ‘endure’ and ‘frustration’. Sometimes the ‘process’ (I use the word loosely!) is so bad it feels like you need to teach people how to do their own jobs.
But then there are the good examples of processes working well – these are the processes that actually restore your faith in humanity. I had to get a passport renewed a year or so ago, and I was amazed at how well the process to do this worked. I did it all online, and from the second I clicked on the ‘Submit’ button, it took less than four days until my new passport arrived on my doorstep. It was so good it was almost suspicious!
I talk to a lot of organizations about processes. Often these conversations come about because the client has some kind of problem. Usually something is not working well or is completely broken. After a little analysis, it is often the case that they either have a bad process in place that they are trying to make work, or no process at all. Sometimes there are just subtle hints of process related problems: delays, higher than expected costs, and frustration (which can be both internal to the Client organization and/or external, affecting Customers).
Sometimes process problems don’t get fixed: the frustration caused by a bad process may not be bad enough to warrant fixing it (another analogy: have you ever just had an occasional toothache that really doesn’t justify a visit to the dentist…?). Sometimes there is just stubborn organizational inertia that prevents a process problem from being fixed. I am sure you’ve heard that old chestnut about ‘We’ve always done it that way, so why change?’. Sometime an organization doesn’t even realize they have a problem.
This is all starting to sound theoretical and academic, so let me illustrate my point with a real-world story of a business problem:
A company utilized a lot of external data in its decision making and would buy this data at great expense from data vendors. One day it was discovered that two different people at the company had bought the same data, meaning the company had bought the same thing twice. This wasted precious budget funds which were needed elsewhere. Initially this didn’t seem to be a big problem – but when it was realized duplicate purchases had been occurring for a while, Management decided things had to change. All that was required was the implementation of a process that required data to be purchased centrally through a single group. The cost to implement this process was negligible, but the money it saved -based on prevention of waste – was huge. This then meant funds were available for use on other more productive purchases. Even better, because this new data approval and purchasing process meant the establishment of a central indexing system describing the data the company already had, it became a lot easier to find data, and operational efficiencies improved. As it turned out, the reason data had been purchased twice was because there had been no such central index – when the problem occurred there was no easy way to find out if data was already available!
The kicker is this: if the problem is worth looking at, it is usually worth solving – but not all problems are even apparent at first. If the problem can be solved, often a process-centric approach will ensure the desired result will be achieved, And here is the bonus: if you consistently apply that good process – one of the key reasons you should actually use a process – the problem won’t come back (read: goodbye problem!). And that’s why I like a good process.
– Gus
