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Last week, we spoke about the need for companies to be intentional in their processes. Businesses must consider not only what they are doing but also why they are doing it. Starting with why, they are able to better identify critical processes and make optimal decisions. This is similar to what Simon Sinek talks about in his best-selling book, Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action. While his ideas are inspirational and useful for leaders the world over, this is not exactly the same as what we mean when we suggest you start with why. The why that we speak of is more tactical, less strategic, and it assumes traditional business goals – profit. This “why” informs us of which processes to pursue, but not how to pursue them. This is where the IPO Model comes in.
The IPO Model is something that is straightforward on its face but provides quite a few insights for companies that dig into it – superficially simple, actually complex. Instead of an initial public offering (as the name might lead you to believe), the model discusses Inputs, Processes, and Outputs. It follows a resource – tangible or not – through these most basic steps and looks to see what comes out the other side.
When the IPO Model is combined with tactical thinking that starts with why, it becomes very powerful. In discussing the IPO Model, one of our interns complained of the poor quality of the buses at his apartment in Bloomington, so we decided to apply the concept to this problem and see where the issue might be.
What’s the Real Issue?
Many of the large apartment complexes serving students that live off campus provide a bus system for their residents to campus and back. This is a business necessity, as students would not be interested in living outside walking distance of campus unless there were reliable alternatives. Many college towns operate their own bus system, but these can be unreliable and inconvenient even when they do work.
The bus system has obvious inputs; gasoline, maintenance, labor (driver), and riders. The process is of course the bus route, leading to the output – riders on the other side of town.
When discussing the issues with the bus system at the apartment, it became obvious to everyone that the root cause of the problem with our intern’s transportation was that management had forgotten the why. The apartment complex had heavily advertised its own, independent bus system. They were so fixated on having their own buses (with their own logo on the side) they forgot the why.
Why were the buses running? To get students to campus of course! But management was obsessed with the what – their own buses, independent of purpose. When they had most of drivers quit at the same time, this thinking prevented them from exploring better, cheaper solutions that would have made their customers happy. When we fixate on the what instead of the why, we limit our use of the IPO Model, even unconsciously.
This myopic focus on the fixing the status quo rather than designing a more reliable process prevented the apartment from looking into contracting with another company, working with the city for better routes on their buses, or something else entirely.
Start by asking WHY, not what.
After Why, What Then How
The value of this becomes more obvious when a process grows more complicated in both steps and inputs. When writing complicated procedures start with WHY, or the purpose, then define WHAT needs to be done to deliver on that purpose by mapping out the process steps and listing out every input that you will need for that procedure with the output in mind.
We must also consider scope. The IPO Model is able to make a procedure as ambitious as the user wants, but it must maintain its scope. This is another area where remembering the why helps. Every crazy idea should be considered, but they won’t all serve the desired output of the process, so some must inevitably be rejected. Minding the why provides the justification.
There is, of course, a process to writing processes. Typically, when Business Improvement Group focuses on process improvement for clients, we brainstorm with the stakeholders. When everyone agrees on the why (no small task) we can proceed to the design. Block diagrams are useful here to show the sequence from step A to B to C, from beginning to end, helping define what needs to occur to deliver our why, or purpose of the process.
Once a process is diagrammed out, your organization will still need some teaching direction on HOW to run the process. This is where step-by-step (or “how-to”) instructions come in. Well written directions will allow any person with sufficient skill to perform the task, so that personnel can become interchangeable. Not to say that employees shouldn’t be given task ownership, but decent directions will make anyone able perform the process.
Instructions also do not have to be written. There has been a trend recently among some companies to provide video instructions, even contracting this out to others.
With all this said, it is important to remember that you are never really doneworking on a process. Next week, we will discuss continuous process improvement with the PDCA method. If an organization just creates a process and leaves it alone, it will be surpassed by others. But this is not good enough. Companies must always be improving!