How do you walk? The question catches many people off guard because it’s something we never think about. Which foot goes in front first? How does it get there? Does the knee bend first or the hip flex or the foot lift? All three at the same time? Very quickly, such a question becomes something only a master of human ambulation can answer. But you still know how to walk…
Ever since you were little and learned to walk, you’ve had a process for doing so. You probably don’t remember much of the learning process, but you remember the result. In many ways, most companies and organizations process development works like this. They certainly have processes for what they do. Consider the process of having IT work done. Perhaps your work computer gets a virus or has a software issue. In smaller and mid-size companies the processes tend to be much less formal, sometimes as simple as shouting down the hallway at whomever has the technical knowledge to fix the issue.
While informal and organic, this is still a process. The technician hears the request, finds the location, diagnoses the problem, and fixes it or replaces the defective component. For a small issue that involves only one or two people – like computer issues, this works well enough. But for something more complicated that spans more individuals, a more robustly defined process is needed. Just like every muscle in your legs must work in concert to move you across the room, every person in an organization must act in harmony to achieve organizational goals.
A Mind of Its Own
Organic processes will arise when processes are not defined. Organizations and even people develop norms and assumptions, specific ways of doing things, whether they realize it or not. The job of an effective manager is to define and control these processes to make the results as desirable as possible for the organization. If you struggle with doing this, you might not be a natural manager – so you need to hire one.
While allowing processes to develop organically might save time investment on the front end, if an organization is acting without intentionality then it will encounter problems. Thankfully, much thought has gone into process design and improvement in the last century, so organizations that are courageous enough to take charge have more tools than ever to do so.
Process Design – Choose Wisely
The process of process design will be the topic of our next blog series. We will first discuss the IPO Model. This has nothing to do with taking a company public (unless that is the process you are creating for a bank!) but rather with understanding how environmental inputs are turned into outputs by the organization.
After this we will discuss Continuous Process Improvement, because establishing a process is only the start. If your company creates a process then does nothing to innovate it after this, the best case scenario is that the competition surpasses you, to say nothing of the natural decay most processes experience. In order to avoid this, we will describe the PDCA method and how this can be used for continually improving the functioning of corporate processes.
This will be the first half of the series. After this, we will focus on the process of problem solving. This well-defined system for whacking problems as they come up is the difference between heading out knowing where you are going instead of aimlessly driving until you find your destination. Intentional businesses are successful businesses.
We will conclude where most companies should begin – by defining a system for creating processes. The most well-known method is DMADV – define, measure, analyze, design, verify. Taking a deep dive into this system will provide the needed background to decide if your organization could benefit from having a better process for creating processes (hint; it can!)
Just as you didn’t quit practicing walking after you took your first steps, process design and improvement is an ongoing battle. As Simon Sinek would say, it is an Infinite Game. There is no way you “win” process design, and there are no clear rules. Instead, you need to equip yourself with all the tools you can to maximize your mobility. The sooner you get walking, the sooner you’ll be running.