Process Design – Page 13 – Discipline makes Daring possible.

March 26, 2021

How to capture a business process: Step 5

When sketching out a process it helps to start with the most straightforward case. The one where everything goes right, or at least goes as expected. Once you have this laid out, you can identify exceptions.

I find it helps to think of the whole process as a river. The straightforward case is the main, well-worn channel, but there may be parts that break off and loop round before coming back into the main flow.

So, for example, your straightforward case for preparing a set of annual accounts for a client assumes you have all the information already, the client approves your draft immediately and you can go straight on to filing them. But what happens if you don’t have all the information? Or the client doesn’t bother to get back to you with approval? The process needs to deal with these too. These are alternative routes through the process – loops in your process river if you like. And that’s exactly how I like to represent them.

Here’s another example. For a maintenance business, the ‘straightforward’ case is the typical reactive, unscheduled job:

March 25, 2021

Semiotics

I keep thinking about yesterday’s recorded message, about how simple it was, how effective. And how creating such a message isn’t rocket science. It probably doesn’t even need the latest tech or AI.

It reminded me of a visit to a care home a few years back. It was more like a hotel, or serviced apartments, actually. The decor was lovely, the amenities were plentiful, a lot of support was included.

But the main thing that made it attractive was the attitude.

“This is home for everyone who lives here. They should be able to live as they would at home. So we run this place around them. There are no mealtimes, no prescribed activities, no common routine. Just lots of extra support, from simple things like extra deep dado rails to a hoist over the bath and onsite carers.”

In other words, the attitude drove the design of everything – the building, the services and the atmosphere. It showed.

It always shows.

When everything behind the sales pitch sends the same signal, nobody can be disappointed.

February 25, 2021

How to capture a business process: Step 4

Now you have the story of your process written down, you can start to identify its components.

Read through the narrative, and pick out the names of things that get mentioned along the way. These will become ‘Props’, like the theatrical term for “an object used on stage or screen by actors during a performance.“

Props might be software e.g. “I enter the prospect’s details into the CRM System/Salesforce/Hubspot“; physical objects or their digital equivalents: “The prospect signs our non-disclosure agreement”, “I send an email to the client acknowledging receipt”. Props can also be implied: “I call the client” means there must be a telephone Prop of some kind.

One Prop in particular will stand out as being the thing that is being worked on by the process, the thing that is the point of the process. The star of the process, if you like. For example the key Prop in a process “File Annual Accounts”, is unsurprisingly, a thing called ‘Annual Accounts’.

This key Prop will help you identify the key Activities that make up the process, because it will be created, transformed and finalised through the process. Each transformation of the Prop called ‘Annual Accounts’ is a separate Activity, with an outcome that is either true or false. You have a set of Draft Accounts or you don’t, there is no halfway house. Any other Props you’ve identified will find a home inside one or more of these Activities, which may themselves be a process.

As an illustration, in order to “File Annual Accounts”, you generally have to create a set of draft accounts (an Activity you might name “Draft Annual Accounts”), check that they make sense (“Verify Draft Annual Accounts”), send them to the client for approval (“Request Draft Annual Accounts Approval”), deal with any changes (“Amend Draft Annual Accounts”), finalise them (“Finalise Annual Accounts”) and finally, send them to Companies House (“File Accounts”).

In this way, following the lifecycle of the key Prop will help you define Activities and the rough order in which they must happen.

In the next post in this series, we’ll look at finessing that order to take account of exceptions.

January 26, 2021

How to capture a business process: Step 3

Now you know what your business process is aiming to achieve (Step 1), and you know where it really starts and ends (Step 2), you’re ready to describe it.

I’ve always found the best way to do this is to literally talk someone through it. Imagine that you are telling the story of this process to a listener, who is going to make notes. Ideally your listener would be another person, but if push comes to shove you can play both roles.

The conversation goes something like this:

As Storyteller, you start at the beginning, thinking of how it usually works. You simply tell the Listener the first thing that happens.
As Listener, you write that down, then ask: “What happens next?” , or “Then what happens?”
The Storyteller describes what happens next.
The Listener, notes it down, and asks again “What happens next?”
Repeat until the Storyteller answers “Nothing, that’s the end. We’ve got to the outcome.”

That’s it. For now. The next step is to work out the order things really need to happen in.

January 25, 2021

Mechanical ecosystems

Let’s look at the human body. Simpler, less tightly-coupled joints are held in place by muscle and cartilage, combining rigidity and strength with flexibility and adaptability. Although there is a ‘standard’ bone shape, tolerances are high, accommodating a wide range of variation in components – both across a population and within a single individual. Growth is allowed for.

At the same time, possibilities are constrained by the surrounding muscles. If there is too much play in a joint, strengthening muscles will help. If there is too little play, stretching and loosening them will allow more movement. Remediation is possible without taking anything apart, or even stopping – all that’s needed to keep things in good order is a healthy variety of movement.

Perhaps this is the sweet spot between machine and ecosystem we should aim for in a business?

January 21, 2021

Building precision

When you’re putting together a machine that needs to run without you, precision engineering is key. Each component must fit tightly to the next, in exactly the right position in order to perform a single highly specific function, and no other.

The upside of this approach is efficiency, durability and a kind of austere beauty. Standardised parts are simpler to mass-produce and easy to replace. You can reach a much larger market. And the whole thing runs as we say, ‘like clockwork’.

The downside is that building a machine takes a lot of upfront investment, and when new technology comes along, that highly-engineered investment turns itself into a pile of scrap. This is true of software machines too.

So maybe the answer is to take our cue from nature and build ecosystems instead?

January 19, 2021

How to capture a business process: Step 2

Step 2 of capturing a Business Process is to work out where it really starts.

A good rule of thumb is to think about where the ‘thing’ you’re dealing with – the ‘Noun’ in your process’s name – gets created, from the perspective of the business. These are good questions to ask:

If the thing is created outside the business, where does it first come into contact with it?
If the thing is created inside the business, where does that happen? Is that where it should happen?

You can ask similar questions to find where your process really ends:

If the thing passes through the business, when does it leave?
If the thing only exists inside the business, where does it get destroyed, or archived?

It’s helpful to think about the process from its real beginning to its real end, because that’s how many opportunities for improvement can be identified, without having to go to the trouble of documenting the entire thing first. It gives you a shortcut, if you like.

January 8, 2021

How to capture a business process: Step 1

The first step in defining a business process is to work out where you want to be at the end of it. More precisely, where do you want the person you are serving to be at the end of it.

This involves stepping up a level or two from your usual narrative – from the minutiae of how it gets done to what it is you are really trying to achieve. This helps you identify ‘what’ has to happen, which in turn can open you up to different ‘hows’ for making it happen.

Write down (or better still get someone else to write down) the process you want to think about as a narrative. Then ask yourself these questions:

What things should be true after this process is completed?
Which of those things is truly meaningful to the person you are serving (your prospect, client or customer)?
- What is it that matters to them?
- What difference will they notice?
- What is it that they are paying you for?
How could you best sum that up in a two-word phrase, composed of a verb followed by a noun? This phrase should be binary, it’s either true or it’s not. You’ve either done it or you haven’t.

Now you’ve found the point of your process. It’s probably much bigger than you thought.

January 7, 2021

A technology for thinking

One of the great reasons for reading so much on so many subjects (a fact which is being brought home to me as we bring our books back into the house) is that you stumble across stuff that helps, that you would never have gone looking for.

Aeon and it’s sister-publication Psyche are two of the my favourite places for stumbling across interesting things.

This week it was this article from Nana Ariel:

Talking out loud to yourself is a technology for thinking

It’s obvious once you think about it.

And it’s why a good first step for capturing a process is to try to explain it to someone else.

January 5, 2021

The joy of sameness.

Patterns are a shortcut to previous experience. They enable us to see similarities beyond a mass of detailed differences. We enjoy repetition and sameness – as long as there are enough differences to stimulate us, and keep our eye moving.

The same goes for processes. Sameness is good. A pattern is easy to grasp and easy to remember. That gives us freedom to fill in the details differently when needed.

The trouble is, when we try to communicate a process to other people, we tend to focus on the detail, not the pattern. We feel we have to capture every exception, every flourish and curlicue, every nuance. The result is a mess, that takes too long to untangle and so languishes unused and ignored. Or an unwieldy encyclopedia of micro-patterns – forms, checklists, procedures that makes it impossible to see the patterns that matter.

So if you’re trying to capture process in your business, try looking for the pattern first. Imagine you’re up a level from the process you’re trying to describe, above it, rather than in it, seeing the path through the woods rather than the immediate undergrowth.

Here’s a brilliant example of someone doing that in a completely different context, to free people from the tyranny of recipes or ready-prepared meals.

The Discipline of pattern is what makes Daring possible in execution.

Thanks to The Intuitive Cook for the inspiration.

Discipline makes Daring possible.

Musings from The Disappearing Boss on People, Process and Responsible Autonomy for small-business employers.

Category: Process Design