Re-framing Processes as Momentum and Debt

I would not call myself an engineer if I was not a lifelong fan of Dilbert.

Here is one of my favorites. Dilbert goes to his manager, requesting approval to buy a bar code scanner. The manager gives him a long-winded answer, detailing an insane number of steps and red tape needed to acquire the scanner. Poor Dilbert sees no other solution other than to become a human bar code scanner and learn how to read them themselves. Short of buying the scanner himself, reading bar codes was the easier option than to go through the company-mandated process!

In June 2015, I wrote an article about challenging processes in evolving environments. That was interesting stage in my career, where I left my cozy operations process-driven role and just concluded a 3-year sales role and learned to appreciate the power of flexibility and empowerment in an organization. It is appropriate that I revisit this topic now that I am back in an operations role, my last being 2008-2012.

As organizations mature and grow from start-up to being established in their markets and fields, they develop their own unique way of doing things. Internally, they build processes, built around their people and culture, and as the years go by these processes inevitably grow with the company, almost taking on a life of their own. As people leave that company and newcomers join, the processes become the guideline for the new employees, the “way things always have been done around here” (Look up the famous experiment with the 5 monkeys and the banana on a ladder and ask yourself does this happen in your organization).

In physics, Newton’s Second Law describes an object’s momentum and the force required to change its motion, a function of mass and velocity. I would describe processes as being the same, objects with certain momentum. The larger the momentum, the larger the force required to change it. How many processes in your organization are inherited processes, that have grown so large that their momentum dictates how things are done around there? Think about that, processes and not the people are now driving how things are done!

In personal finance, a financial debt is something that drags a person’s financial freedom, a constant reminder that money is owed and must be paid (with interest). Complicated processes that are well entrenched in an organization are a type of debt if you think about it. The interest being paid is time, and unlike money time is truly a resource that never comes back. Over time these complex processes accumulate and need to be cleared off, else the burden to maintain makes the organization carry on too much debt, making it slower, the very purpose it was initiated against.

Therefore, make sure before introducing some policy, process or workflow, if there is no alternative way of addressing the problem. Remember that it is likely to come back to haunt the organization in future. Too much time is spent on servicing the momentum or debt that does not add value. The alternative is we need sustainable processes that make everyone responsible to clear the organization of complex processes. This is as much a bottom-up exercise as it is top down.

Time to live by these words in my new role, and I welcome you, the gentle reader, to do the same.