The Worst Process I’ve Ever Seen*
Andrew Visser
Simplifying Complexity: Operational Excellence for Fast Growing Businesses - Operations Leader | Director of Operations/COO
*...and I’ve seen some real stinkers…
This one goes back to my days working for a large multinational and is the most complex, long winded and value-less process I’ve ever had to deal with.
As customers we often see the results of a bad process - most of the issues you have when dealing with customer support are due to a bad process - but this one I had to actually try to use to get something done.
Background
We wanted to reimburse a partner company for some work they’d done on a proof of concept for a customer. They were using our tools and the potential deal was worth over $150k. A senior manager had mentioned there was a scheme to make these payments during a presentation at partner day and one of the partners I worked with jumped on this.
It’s a great idea and creates a win-win for everyone, but now I have to figure out how to get them the payment.?
The Process
There’s gotta be a process - it’s a multinational company, there’s process for everything. Just need to find out what it is.?
Search the intranet (it was the mid 2000’s all large companies had one then) Nothing on there.?
I’ll ask, someone will know.
None of my team knew.
None of the other tech or sales teams knew.
My boss didn’t know.
None of the other tech managers knew.
The senior manager who mentioned it… he didn’t know either…
Since nobody has a clue we started digging around and my boss eventually found the right person and the form we needed.
Easy! Fill out the form, boss approves it and email it off, payment on the way. Right?
Nope.
Needed to be approved by my boss's boss. Fair enough.?
Done. Payment in a month or so…we’re told.?
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Wrong.
We send follow-up emails, trying calling people. Trying to find where the form has gone and what is happening. We'd have sent a carrier pigeon if it would have helped. Our request seemed to have gone to a parallel dimension. Nobody seems to know anything.?
Months of silence. The CEO at the partner is getting quite agitated by now, understandably he wants the money.?
The Result
Almost six months later my boss and I get an email from the dark depths of accounting saying we've done it all wrong and should have gotten approval for the payment from another manager (at the same level as my boss, and with responsibility for technical sales in that region, but nothing to do with our management chain) before we submitted the form. All three of us got admonished for breaking the 'rules' on requesting payments like this, even though the other manager knew nothing about this and had no reason to know anything about it.?I still feel sorry for her now.
We never did entirely figure out where this form had been or exactly who had been involved or what the right process was, but based on the email threads we did see it had been up and down several management chains in different divisions for various approvals, comments and just general visibility. Oddly, quite a few of the comments were along the lines of: Nothing to do with me...
But finally someone somewhere approved the payment and the partner got their money. Months after the deal had closed.?
Conclusions
What was bad about this process?
Other than everything.
It wasn’t properly documented, or documented at all and so it was unclear what had to be done.
It was overly complicated. Far too many people had been involved and far too many had to approve, which meant even if it had follow the mysterious process it would have taken ages to get done.
Most of the steps added no value to the process. It was all about creating visibility, making people feel important and the appearance of doing 'something' - not about doing something useful.?
When something went wrong people looked for who to blame, not how to fix the problem or improve the process.
Finally, the scale of it was out of all proportion to what was trying to be achieved.
How out of proportion? Six months of effort, involving at least two dozen people, multiple calls and lengthy emails, just to provide a payment approved.
Post Script
That payment…
It was $1200. No, that’s not a typo; one thousand two hundred US dollars.?
At a company that paid more than that for electricity per second in the server farm in the building next door...?
They probably spent more on the process than the value of the payment…
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1 年OMG I would throw my hands up in despair Andrew Visser - mind you that probably looks like the inside of many people’s brains ??????
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1 年Wow, what a crazy process! It's surprising how things can get so tangled up in big companies. Andrew Visser
?Founder at Omni Communications, Biomatch FR? & Manchester | Find A Business Expert?Telecoms, Omnichannel Communications & Biometric Facial Recognition Expert?Tech Entrepreneur?Innovation Expert?Business Connector?
1 年This is definitely a huge issue in some organisations, Andrew Visser. If you have any clients that have issues like this then there's scope for us to explore a collaboration. I help deliver Omnichannel Communications services for businesses with services that incorporate workflow management for users on the system. This ensures they not only have access to all customer data at their fingertips (via the built-in CRM and Service Management services) but can also ensure that every step of a process is followed by using automated workflows.