How much time do you save by not having a proper look at your business processes and instead assuming that they are working as designed?
This is a bit of trick question, of course. It depends on how much time you have spent on developing your processes in the first place and the level of control / management you already have in place.
The stimulus for this blog post was me stumbling in to another upside down process that was deemed to be fine (I'm not really complaining, as this is what I get paid to sort out). My surprise was how far apart the two positions were:
Position 1 - perception - the process works but could be improved.
Position 2 - reality - there is no control and no one really knows how the process is meant to work.
The existence (duration) of the gap, to my knowledge, is about ten months.
The time to find out the size of the gap, approximately 30 minutes.
After the review an action plan was put in place and the process was under control in just a few days.
So, what is the lesson here?
If you have even an inkling that a process could be improved it is worth taking a few minutes out of your busy schedule to go an have a look. Smell the air. Touch the process. Speak to the people 'stuck' with it. See if it makes sense. Check if it looks right.
The time saved in the longer term is worth the hassle in the short term to make the effort to go and see what is really going on.
Giles Johnston
Author of Business Process Re-Engineering
This is a bit of trick question, of course. It depends on how much time you have spent on developing your processes in the first place and the level of control / management you already have in place.
The stimulus for this blog post was me stumbling in to another upside down process that was deemed to be fine (I'm not really complaining, as this is what I get paid to sort out). My surprise was how far apart the two positions were:
Position 1 - perception - the process works but could be improved.
Position 2 - reality - there is no control and no one really knows how the process is meant to work.
The existence (duration) of the gap, to my knowledge, is about ten months.
The time to find out the size of the gap, approximately 30 minutes.
After the review an action plan was put in place and the process was under control in just a few days.
So, what is the lesson here?
If you have even an inkling that a process could be improved it is worth taking a few minutes out of your busy schedule to go an have a look. Smell the air. Touch the process. Speak to the people 'stuck' with it. See if it makes sense. Check if it looks right.
The time saved in the longer term is worth the hassle in the short term to make the effort to go and see what is really going on.
Giles Johnston
Author of Business Process Re-Engineering
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