Turn off the AutoPilot
There's a funny thing about processes; most people want them, especially in a complicated workstream. Provided the right input or motivation most people will even follow a good process - they might even like it! What also occurs is the process gets set up, followed and then forgotten.
If you have read any of my other posts, you will know that one of the most frustrating things for me is to hear someone justify a process because "we've always done it that way". That might be true, and it might even be valid, but that shouldn't keep you from questioning it, and trying to improve on it. Twice in the last week I've had conversations about things running like this, so I thought I'd post this and see what others thought.
During facilitated sessions, I'm always amazed at how many processes I dig into that no one can describe fully; generally through attrition, job shifts, etc. there is a process that becomes rote, and the legacy of how and why it was built gets lost. Once you lose the 'why' of a process you are down a slippery slope with people following (or not following) it. Users lose the context of how their part of it fits with others, and then someone just blankly completes a step and hands something off, often with very little concern for the end product.
So how do you stop that? It's a great question, and one not easily solved generally. There are a couple of things that stand out though:
So the first idea sounds pretty easy, and it can be. Be prepared though, you might find that participants of a process might not have any idea what the outcome of that process is. The second idea is also pretty simple. This one works better when multiple disparate groups all have a piece of a process. Many times, the handoffs between these groups are ill-defined and the focus on what is being done gets lost. Drawing that out, and key here is to agree on the process, helps highlight areas of confusion and redundancy.
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The last one is a favorite of mine. I suspect the origins of this might be from manufacturing, and it likely works really well in those situations. It can be really interesting to start with the product and work back to how it gets created. Again, this can bring out redundant steps or parts of a process that might not even be necessary.
As always, I'm interested in hearing what experiences others have had with this. Anything you tried that worked, or didn't work?
some would argue the process is only as good as the people following it, and should we, where business allows, have musical chairs with job functions often to revisit..and others would take your idea and add a fourth step that is so often missed- the need to revisit the process with a set frequency as things change.