Process & Workflow Improvement

Until you stop trying to manage people and focus on managing processes while leading people you will constantly be struggling just to sustain your organization much less grow it.

Processes are the key to delivering consistent results. They are the key to consistent financial results. They are the key to consistent quality of service to customers. They are the key to being able to truly lead your team and your company.

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Steps to Developing a Process

Define End Result: This seems obvious but most of the time this gets put last or as an organization grows the processes are not adapted for the changing environment or people. The focus remains on the process, not on the end result and how that fits with the organizations goals. Whether the goal is delivering a certain level of quality to a customer, attaining a certain level of cash flow or maintaining inventory or stock levels the end result needs to be clearly defined.

Sub-Goals: Do several other goals have to be attained to achieve the primary goal? Often this is overlooked, especially as an organization grows. It is assumed that everything and everyone is working together but for some reason things just don't "feel right." Analysis will show that this is often because some of the sub-goals are missing or out-of-sync with the desired end result.

Process Flow-Chart: Who does what? When do they do it? What order do they do it in? Do this starting at the lowest level of sub-goals and work up to the desired end result. How Much, How Long: With the flow chart start breaking the steps down into how much each step costs and how long it takes.

Why?: Now is time to go back and take a look at every step in the process and ask why it has to be done, could it be done cheaper, can two steps happen concurrently? At this time you will re-arrange your flowchart several times. Continue to update the cost analysis of the process to see what the changes are.

Quality Control: Assuming that quality and consistency will just happen is a recipe for failure. Look back at the process and ask two questions. What steps are in the process to check, measure and correct problems? What is the cost of check versus the cost of having a substandard result?

Document & Train:

Now that you have a solid process documented with the proper measures of quality control built in you need to make this process a permanent part of your organization. Document it, develop training around it and have several people in your organization who can train others in the process. Even if you don't need anyone else to learn the process right now you still need to instill a culture of learning and training or you will be back to trying to manage people, not processes.

The Value of an Experienced 3rd Party

The value of having an experienced 3rd party facilitate these steps cannot be overlooked. People are naturally resistant to change. In front of their peers, subordinates and bosses they are usually defensive to some degree. They may have been the ones who put the process in place. Many feel that there is job security attached to holding onto to the information about what they do and how they do it.

A 3rd party can help break down these walls faster because there is no history and no future. They are simply there for a set period of time to help create a an understanding of what the processes in the business are, why they are there, how they may be improved and to assist in the creation of documentation and training.

Approach & Experience

Breaking down the walls or resistance is difficult. Aside from being a 3rd party with no history I also bring a lot of experience from holding positions at all levels of a construction company from field to management to accounting and human resources. See About David for more details on experiences. This diversity of experiences helps me relate to the daily challenges that most people face. This experience also helps with a deep understanding of what processes are required, what can be streamlined, where potential quality problems and what the implementation challenges will be.

The order in which processes are designed and documented should generally follow the order laid-out in the CCD. Specific processes can be defined and improved out of this order based on organizational needs but in general one process builds on another so for the best long-term results it is best to approach them in order.

The second key is the Cascading Involvement Planning. I will start with 1 or 2 key people to define the end result, sub goals, and design the preliminary flow charts.

We would then bring in at least 1 person who is involved in each part of the process. If the process is for a single person to implement then it is still good to bring in someone else who would serve as a backup to this person if they were to go on vacation, become sick or leave the company for some reason. With this second group of people will will go back to the desired end-result and make sure that we have agreement. We will then follow-through the rest of the steps through quality control.

With the notes from this process we will go back to the 1 or 2 key people and work to document the process and design training.

The next phase is the most important for building the process into the culture of your company. During this phase we will involve everyone who is part of the process and 1 or more new people who may become part of the process or who depend on this process to deliver their own results.

The 1-2 key people will then use the training materials to train this group of people on the process. Improvements and comments will be added to the the documentation and training material.

By the time this has been repeated a dozen times or so in an organization of the period of a year or two a culture shift will occur where people become very open to learning and training. They will begin to see everything as a process. They will constantly be looking of new ways to improve the process. They will have a system for documenting and rolling out these improvements. At this point your organization will be very strong and ready for change and growth.

It is natural to want to short-cut the process of process improvement but that will only lead to short-term results.