Thriving Through Processes
Organizations without processes never thrive.
Effective and efficient processes create platforms that enable, enhance, and evaluate both individual and organizational performance. What’s your systematic process for achieving breakthroughs, living transparently, or solving problems?
Powerful processes:
- Eliminate drama.
- Prevent distractions.
- Focus talent.
- Instill confidence.
- Expedite efficiencies.
- Establish measures.
John M. Bernard’s book, “Business at the Speed of Now” is must reading for any process-challenged organization. Here’s one example of John’s process-thinking, a problem solving approach your teams can employ to every problem every time.
Seven Steps to Solve Problems:
- Agree on the problem. Define the challenge and ask why a solution matters. Additionally, explain why the problem requires a quick solution, how to measure success, and a proposed deadline. Your problem statement and its parts must be concise, clear, and blame-free. It must not offer solutions.
- Map the process. Understand how the work currently gets done and where it breaks down. Create a process map including all decision points.
- Find the root cause. Complete a root cause analysis by first gathering data that explains how and why the process breaks down.
- Develop solutions. Create several solutions and choose the best one. Assess its impact on surrounding processes. Complete an implementation workplan.
- Implement the fix. Monitor success and adjust as you go.
- Hold the gain. Install controls that prevent the root cause from reoccurring. Address reoccurrences quickly and decisively.
- Reflect and Learn. Discuss and document knowledge gained and lessons learned.
Essential:
Adopt your problem solving process before you need it.
If you’d like to develop processes for creating breakthroughs, enhancing transparency, solving problems, and much more, check out “Business at the Speed of Now.” (uncompensated endorsement)
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What successful systematic processes have you employed?
What do you find most useful about John’s seven step process for solving problems?
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This article really nails it!! 7 equally important steps that are critical to truly solving problems. Shared with my management team this morning. Thanks!!
Hi Jason,
Thanks for your good word.
I particularly liked John’s idea of asking “why a solution matters.”
Best,
Dan
Interesting to touch on Speed and Process. After we wrote Strategic Speed, in which we essentially said that speed is all about the people, many people asked us: “What about process?” We realized that processes today need to go beyond ‘efficiency’ – they need to be proficient. That is, they should advance knowledge or skill thorough competence derived from training or practice.
Here is the white paper we wrote on the topic if anyone would like more resources on this topic:
http://www.forum.com/_assets/download/aad6950d-b8ac-4654-9f49-5811060b1637.pdf
Thanks for joining and extending the conversation.
I love your book “Strategic Speed.” I can’t believe its been almost a year and 1/2 since I read it.
Best,
Dan
Good post Dan.
It is an invaluable first step in eliminating the drama. Organizations and the people within them are already stessed and the prosepct of bringing change to the table feels overwhelming to people. If you can separate the drama and the personal issues, then you make a tremendous step forward.
And, I agree with Bernard’s first question. Why does the solution matter? Who cares, and what’s going to happen because of it? If people can’t clearly see what you are trying to accomplish, and on a more personal level, what’s the benefit in it for them, then they will not be cooperative in the change process.
My best to you,
Martina
@martinamcgowan
Hi Martina,
Thanks for being such a consistent contributor to the conversation.
Your focus on drama rings true with me. I believe if we lower the amount of energy spent dealing with drama people will be better able to achieve great results.
My wife agrees with you on the value of “why does it matter”… If it doesn’t matter, why are we talking about it.
Best,
Dan
The one thing that John left off the list is that processes must “Unite” the team, not only the internal team but any external tribes as well. The final outcome always remains the same “A Client Endorsement”. If the organization is focused on Endorsable Outcomes it will go a long way toward minimizing any organizational measurement issues. Unification is the key to Endorsement.
Hi Larry,
Love how you extend the process to include clients. Makes a ton of sense to me.
Interesting statement…unification is the key to endorsement. Sweet.
Best,
Dan
“Find the root cause.” Music to my ears. How often do people try to fix the symptoms and not the cause?
Hi John,
Fixing symptoms is like giving aspirin to a person dying of thirst.
🙂
Cheers,
Dan
Dear Dan,
Process creates direction. Effective process saves time, energy and increases motivation, efficiency and clarity. Great process is defined by great vision and people. It vision is not based on values; process may not create value in the system. I do agree that finding root cause is essential but even more essential is to find out multi perspective of solutions. And the most important part is leadership decision to take action. Strategies fail if actions are not taken in time. So execution of decision in time is crucial to make process great.
Reflect and learn is perhaps the most useful step. Without learning, mistakes may re-appear. So learning from mistakes is better step. Great processes are symptom of successful organizations. When automated, it increases businesses, performance and reduces cost. And organization could be leaders in the products and services.
YES, we must have good processes in organizations in order to optimize results. But those same processes can also cause everything to stay the same. I’ve been working with process improvement my whole life, it seems. And the same processes that enable high performance are often the ones that inhibit high performance…
Way too often, companies have good processes turned bad. What works now may not work so effectively in the future. But the processes and the measures and the expectations and all that will also work against continuous improvement. It is the same situation where a managers says that they have “done” continuous improvement — meaning that they are done improving!
The exemplary performers in most organizations commonly do 400% of the performance of the average people in key measures. My experience is that they do this because they understand how things really work and then bend or break some of the systems and processes in order to do what is right.
Consider what happened with the well-intentioned ISO 9000 initiatives. They did not induce companies to improve quality, they merely insured that the companies did things the SAME WAY, they improved consistency. Most of the times, this had the effect of improving quality, but it also had the long-term effect of implementing documenting processes that made innovation and improvement one of those Royal Pains in the (somewhere).
I’ve written about this at http://performancemanagementcompanyblog.com/2011/10/31/ideas-innovation-and-strategy-implementation-getting-things-done-more-better-faster/ and in a few other places in my blog.
The Round Wheels of Today become the Square Wheels of Tomorrow and we need to focus on continuous continuous improvement in order to keep making progress.
(I stared writing another post but it disappeared – hope this does not show up in the work of the Department of Redundancy Department!)
the challenge I see with process is that process is really about engaging the front line people who will do the work. Creating a “process” (writing it down) can only be effective if you have engaged the people who will deliver it. If you fail to dedicate the time needed to ensure everyone on a team is part of the process, you will never realize the efficienies. I am currently challenged by the time that is needed for everyone on a team to engage, understand and accept a change process, but I know on a deeper level we cannot short cut this, to create process on paper will never work if the folks who deliver do not understand, accept and believe the process will create the outcomes we know we need to achieve.
This post about the book nicely challenges my beliefs and practices. Developing processes is critical and invariably under utilized in organizations. Solving problems is the domain of the engineer, mechanic and architect – they have a process for reducing variables, making things less risk-prone, more sustainable, etc.,
I assert that the problem with processes to solve problems is that they are hard to apply effectively without consideration for the human element.
John’s seven steps make sense if you are building a bridge or repairing a car engine. It’s done largely free of human variables.
The challenge of organizations that do more than build bridges and fix engines is in John’s step #3. When we cross over into the human variables in the process, establishing root cause leads to at best disagreement, usually a power struggle between the various parties about who’s right.
So, how do we apply the quality of his expertise when there’s infinite human variability?
I think it is to use the principles of John’s thinking about the mechanical aspects of process and have guiding principles about the human aspect of the process. And remember that when the process logic seems to be bogged down, go back to the guiding principles.
Needless to say, as an advocate of the solution focus model for change I recommend it as one way to develop guiding principles.
Dan:
Thanks for sharing some of the thoughts in my book. As many of the comments touch on, process is key bit we have to be so careful to not use process to stifle creativity but instead to capture what has been and is being learned about what works best.
In the end, the most mis-managed process of them all is the management process. Management thinks process applies to everyone else, not them. Wrong. Management is the mother of all processes.
John
John,
Your thought of management as process rocks! It helps open new ways of thinking and measuring.
Glad you stopped in,
Dan
As a quality professional working in manufacturing it is my job to manage processes in order to remove or at least minimise the chaos that comes from having zero processes when a company is trying to make stuff.
The hardest part is getting across to busy people that the processes that are going in place are to help not hinder, and allow them to get on with their work in a way that gives them the freedom to be successful. I’ve found the most successful way to get unity / buy-in / engagement is to make the person who will actually be following the SOP or whatever feel as though they had a say. After all they are the experts.
But once the processes and systems are in place, a kind of miracle happens – everyone can get on with their work safe in the knowledge that they know what to do at any given time, everything is recorded and if the worst should happen the company will continue. Result – no (or, rather, less) chaos! (And job satisfaction for me :o)
Agree with illneverworkagain that letting people have a say in the process decisions is critical. It’s the best way to devolve the day-to-day decision-making (or lack of) that hinders so many businesses.