The Process Ninja

Why speed and flexibility will be the new process essentials for 2010

We are in the midst of a process revolution. At no time in our history have businesses been so prone to the speed of change. Technology today has changed the game plan and the field is becoming more level. Big businesses no longer have the advantage they previously had. New media has turned things on its head.

But it’s also a consumer revolution – never have we had the ability to express ourselves so rapidly or as effectively as consumers.  What does this mean for organisations? It’s a case of adapt or die. Social media tools such as Twitter are meaning that customers are venting like never before (both good and bad), but mostly bad. They now are able to be heard by the world – and heard instantly.

Those blundering corporations that don’t return calls, don’t respond to e-mails and don’t give the service that they spend so much money advertising are going to have a wake-up call. They have never been at risk of such consumer erosion in their history. They are at risk from upstarts, from small business, from competitors who “get it”.

In the last 30 years or so we’ve become accustomed as customers to being disappointed. We’ve gotten used to “press 1 for blah, press 2 for blah…” and being shunted around in circles, our problems being passed around like hot potatoes until we give up. Not any more. Consumers now have the power and they’re using it. We are entering an age where they will expect a higher standard of service than ever before (and so they should). Remember “good old fashioned service”, well it isn’t old fashioned anymore.

As a result Business processes now need to be flexible enough to change to rapidly respond to customers’ needs and wants. If ever there was a time for BPM to prove its worth, that time has come.

A Triage for Hospital Processes

I recently had the pleasure of visiting lovely Ryde Hospital with a rather painful stomach. It was an interesting experience in process. What amazed me most about it was the incredible levels of duplication of effort and the vast inefficiency caused by needless beauraucracy. I have great sympathy for those having to work in such conditions and those that are left waiting in pain whilst healthcare professionals fill in endless forms - a waste of their skills and time.

Before I left for the hospital I was actually intent on seeing a GP. I remembered that Ryde hospital had a late night GP clinic so I googled it to see the opening hours. Great - it was open until 10pm (ideal at 9pm at night!) So off I went, parked the car a short distance away and went to the reception desk.

"Oh there's no GP clinic here anymore" said the lady behind the desk - you'll have to see an emergency doctor. Not a big deal but I couldn't help but think of all the people that must turn up with minor ailments taking up the time of emergency doctors who could be spending their time on more serious things.

So I stand at the desk for 5 minutes filling in details about who I am and being asked "what's wrong with you". I am amazed that I can turn up at hospital with just a medicare card and my DOB and get free medical treatment. I could have given my medicare card to anyone and they could easily use it. I wonder how many people sell healthcare on the black market this way.

Next I am sent to the triage nurse who fills in more details and asks "what's wrong with you" and "what medications are you taking". Triage - a concept invented in WW1 and still with us. (Can you think of anything else from 1914 that might be useful???)

She asks me to wait until I am called. About 15 mins later a nurse calls me in and asks "what's wrong with you" and "what medications are you taking". He takes blood (after butchering both of my hands) and prods my stomach. He then asks me to wait outside.

Another 15 minutes later a doctor appears and asks me to come back in. He asks "what's wrong with you" and "what medications are you taking" and I tell him the story again and he prods my stomach. Eventually he scribbles something down and says that he will inject me with some drug.

15 minutes later another person turns up to inject me. He doesn't tell me what it is until I ask, but he can't actually tell me what it does. Apparently he's just "the injecting guy". Nice job. The doctor then returns. I ask him what the stuff I have been injected with actually does. He's nice enough to actually tell me.

Another 15 minutes of sitting on the bed and I am sent on my way. Guts still sore and thinking that I should have gone to see my GP the next day...

So what could they have done better?

For a start it seems bonkers to me in this day and age that Australia doesn't have a centralised healthcare database. I find it bewildering that I have to go through entering and checking details every time I go to a hospital or doctor. The time spent doing data entry is staggering. What is more staggering is the reliance on bits of paper that travel here, there and everywhere in a hospital. Enter the data once and pass it on electronically - that's the trick. It would eliminate data entry, duplication of effort and improve the quality of healthcare - after all, we are talking about people's lives here. Just one small piece of information could cost a life (and the current system is like russian roulette).

And what about the customer experience?

Well, how wonderful would it be to log onto the internet and be able to see realtime wait times to see doctors, or even to register at the hospital before you leave the house. So much better to be able to enter accurate details of your ailments rather than have someone interpreting them for you. And how much better would it be if there was more than a scratchy TV in the waiting room that no-one can hear. And before anyone says it, it's not free - we all pay taxes so that we receive theses service - we are paying customers!

Unfortunately hospitals (like their triage system) are stuck in Edwardian England. It is a case of we do it this way because we do it this way. Hospitals deserve to have adequate supplies of money to provide services, but we also need to make them work productively, efficiently and improve the customer experience.

The system is sick, let's make it better.

- TPN

If it seems too hard, it is too hard

In those moments where you throw up your hands and say “why is it so hard?!!!” I am thinking of you. And if you are really lucky, somewhere there is a company on the cutting edge thinking about it too.

Unfortunately there are many that aren’t. I had one such “why is it so hard?!!” moment last weekend. This moment came when I stood in front of an aisle in Bunnings Warehouse (hardware store), light fitting in hand staring at the thousands of lightbulbs in front of me. All I wanted was a BW22. How hard could that be? Well as the lightbulbs were arranged by brand rather than type and as most of the boxes were the same size, it was like trying to find a raindrop in a swimming pool. Not only this, but the light bulb code was written on the boxes in tiny print, so walking along the rows and reading the codes took forever. Of course as they were organised by brand I had to find each BW22 in a different section so that I could compare the price. Then, of course I had to find out which BW22 had the Edison screw, not the bayonet.

Then I gave up.

I’ll just ask someone, I thought. 10 minutes later, after wandering to the other side of the store I finally found a little helper who cheerfully advised me on lightbulb types.

So in the end, I got what I wanted, but why did I have to spend 30 minutes to buy a lightbulb? Is this a good customer experience? Of course not!

Is it too complex to think that the store could be organised so that a small quantity of light globes (a few of each brand) could be placed next to the applicable light fittings? Wouldn’t that provide a better customer experience whilst saving the store money on staff costs due to continual customer enquiries?

And in the event a customer needs to ask a question, is it a good experience that they have to wander around looking for staff? Is it so hard to have a button to press to get help, or for the store to be monitored by cameras where customers looking for help to be spotted and quickly assisted?

It’s not that hard. But when it seems too hard, you know what to do: take your business elsewhere.

- TPN

Outside-in Part 3 - The Method

So I've talked about what outside-in has achieved and about successful customer outcomes - by how do we practically implement outside-in?

Outside-in is fundamentally about aligning processes with successful customer outcomes. Through workshops with little more than than sticky-notes, brown paper and the front line staff in the room we can start to radically change our thinking of organisational processes.

When we look at the customer experience we are looking for three key items within the process:

Moments of Truth – any interaction with the customer – this could be a customer to person interaction, for example or a customer to system interaction. These moments represent an opportunity in time to delight the customer or to fail!

Break points – any hand-off in the process – these represent potential points where the process can break down.

Business Rules – any decision point in the process. These can add complexity, increase effort and be a potential failure point.

When we map out the process we start to identify where these three factors occur for each step in the process. We then use these to calculate the point of failure factor for our process. This point of failure factor gives us an idea of how optimised (or not optimised!) our processes are from a customer point of view. The point of failure factor has been proven to directly correlate to customer satisfaction – so a high level of potential failure will equal a propensity for customers to be dissatisfied (I wonder why?!)

Thinking about our process with all its moments of truth, break points and business rules for a moment it is easy to see how customer dissatisfaction can occur. You may think that having lots of moments of truth (i.e customer interaction) might be a good thing, but think of it this way: if you had to call up a company to get some information but each time you received the information it was inaccurate and had to call again, how long would it take to irk your dissatisfaction? And what if instead the company had not only given you the information, but had given you extra information that had helped you further?

So once the point of failure factor has been identified we seek to improve our processes. But how to we do this? We need to:

1. Eliminate
2. Improve

Each moment of truth, break point or business rule represents an opportunity, but the more of them we have the greater our chance of failure occurring. So to reduce our point of failure factor we seek to eliminate as many as we can. Obviously we can’t practically get rid of all of them, but we need to ensure that the ones that we leave in place are improved as much as possible and that they are aligned to successful customer outcomes.

This is a very high level overview of how outside-in works. If you’d like to find out more or to become trained in the technique I’d recommend you visit the following links:

BP Group - http://www.bpgroup.org/

BP Group on Linkedin - http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=1062077&trk=myg_ugrp_ovr

Steve Tower's Blog (World Outside-in Guru) - http://successfuloutcomes.blogspot.com/

Remember, The Process Revolution Starts Here...

- TPN

Outside-in Part 1 - The Process Revolution Starts Here

Six Sigma and Lean's bodies lie smouldering and decomposing in the ashes of the 20th century. A revolution is upon us. Some are wise enough to have seen it coming, some have only recently found it and the others, well, they'll soon adapt or die.

What I am talking about is an approach that is so radically different from the ways that we have traditionally approached process improvement that it forces you to totally alter your current mindset. It is an approach that is the secret weapon of some of the world's greatest companies such as Google, Apple and Virgin.

It's called Outside-in.

On paper outside-in sounds like a "no brainer" - it's about looking at process from the customer's experience. I'm sure you think you already do that, but if you aren't using outside-in already I can categorically tell you that you aren't. Outside-in uses a method to systematically look at the customer's experience from end to end, rather than looking at improving the customer's experience by altering internal processses - this is inside-out thinking. Whereas inside-out thinking puts a bandage on the effect, it doesn't eliminate the cause - the wound still bleeds.

As organisations we have become crippled by our internal processes. We've become so entwined in what we do day to day we've forgotten why we exist - to serve our customer - to give them what they need, to give them what they want and sometimes to give them what they don't know they need yet! The customer is our reason for being, without them we cease to exist, yet through our bureaucracy and our bulk we become a bloated beast of burden - unable to move rapidly to meet the needs of the lightning fast pace of life around us. In the end, we sink and die whilst the nimble climb higher and higher.

When we use Outside-in to optimise process we achieve three things simultaneously - We reduce costs, improve the customer experience and as a result improve revenue. This we call "the triple crown".

Sounds to good to be true? Well, it's not. And here's why:

• Whilst Marks and Spencer flounder in the UK, Zara are achieving world domination
• Whilst Delta and United airlines are dying in the states, Southwestern airlines is flourishing
• Whilst Best Buy expand, their major competitors have gone bust
• Whilst Nokia try to sell outdated phones Apple kill the market with the iPhone
• Tesco has surged to be the no1 supermarket in the UK, now bidding to buy the former no 1
• Ryanair become the most profitable airline in Europe whilst BA implode
• Whilst british banks go bust, bank Santander is posting huge profits

What do these victors have in common? They all use Outside-in to achieve the "triple crown".

So, do you think Lean and Six Sigma will help you to achieve all that? Thought not.

Welcome to the revolution.

- TPN

Obituary: Lean, Six Sigma

Today the BPM community was saddened to hear of the loss of it's two favourite sons, Lean & Six Sigma.

Lean, who's ailing father Toyota will no doubt be deeply distressed by the news must surely be shocked by his son's sudden decline after several healthy years at the helm. Six Sigma's father Motorola may have seen the end coming for some time after his son was seen to be unable to keep up with the demands of the modern business world.

Both will be remembered fondly by bankers and software providers, who enjoyed many years of revenue generation and endless training courses in partnership with these captains of industry. Others, however, described them as being monolothic dinosaurs lumbering out of the conveyor belt mentality of the industrial revolution.

Whatever your opinion they did their best and achieved some success in what they set out to do. For a while they were the kings of all they surveyed; but times change and in the lightning fast pace of today's world they simply couldn't keep up. Their time has been and gone.

The kings are dead, long live the king...

The "Dead Time" debate continues @ Process Cafe

Gary over at the Process Cafe has continued the discussion about my concept of "dead time" - he takes the concept a bit further than I did and it's a welcome extension to my thinking! (I like it when others do the thinking for me!) Check it out his article "Dead Time...How Do You Treat Yours?"

The Concept of "Dead Time" in Processes

When I was at University I studied the classic Human Resources stuff - Maslow's hierarchy of needs, etc. One of the classic studies (of which I have forgotten the name) always sticks in my mind.

The experiment measured how workers in a factory worked most productively. It essentially discovered that those who worked rapidly could only keep up the rapid work for a certain amount of time before they "burned out" whilst those that were most productive worked at a steady pace throughout.

What this shows is that the "fast" workers were probably operating near to 100% productivity, while the others were operating at, say 70%. When the fast workers burnt out they (for example) dropped to 30% productivity - so overall their productivity was less over the piece.

Where I am going with this is what I call the concept of "dead time". In any process where human beings are involved you will rarely or never have 100% productivity - it's just not our nature. "Dead time" is the gap between 100% productivity and actual productivity.

So why is this important? Well it needs to be considered when looking at processes. This is because it is a waste of effort, time, money, etc. to improve process steps that fall into "dead time". For example is it worth installing new lifts in a building that are super fast to enable employees to get to their desks quicker? I'd say probably not as this period of time may fall into "dead time". Is it worth spending money on a super fast coffee machine in the kitchen? Probably not because people will still stand around and talk to whoever is in the kitchen at the time.

These are simplistic examples, but it is always important to realise that there will always be percentage of "dead time" in every process - it isn't always worth optimising every stage of the process - making the judgement call of what fits into "dead time" is the tricky part.

- TPN

Have You Lost Control of Your Processes?

Is it all falling apart? Oh dear, what has gone wrong? Did you think about controls when you built that shiney new process?

When Joy Division once sang "And she showed up all the errors and mistakes, And said I've lost control again." in their eponomous song "Control" they hit the nail on the head. Control is about reducing the errors in process, it is about reducing mistakes and it is about keeping the process true to its original intent.

When you create a new process or fix a broken one you must create process controls. What I mean by this is that you must have means of keeping the process on track. Think of it a bit like a slalom skier going down a course. His goal is to get to the finish line, but he has to follow the flags or he gets disqualified. But how do you set controls?

Choosing the controls can be as simple as looking at your process and thinking about what are the drop dead, must happen steps in the process. How many you have depends on the complexity of the process (but don't overdo it). Once you have decided upon your control steps you should continually audit the process to ensure that the control steps are being adequately met.

Ian Curtis, the lead singer of Joy Division eventually committed suicide - tortured by his inner demons and his inability to control his world. Thankfully we have the simpler task of controlling business processes, but the lesson here is the same: if you lose control you can be left with nothing.

- TPN

Proving the value of process: If it moves, measure it, if it doesn't move, measure it

STOP! Don't do anything. Sir, move away from the process. Before you think about changing any process for the better there is one thing you must do: MEASURE.

Why measure when you know it's broken? Why measure when it's already caused a catastrophe? I'll tell you why; because one day some little prick with a bald head and a bad suit will come along and say "how can we justify all this spend on process?" and if you haven't measured anything you will have nothing to disprove him. He'll pack up your little process shop and go back to counting his beans, happy in the knowledge that he's saved money - even though we know he's cost more money in the long run.

So here's what you do - measure everything. Measure before you start, measure when you're finished and keep measuring when you're done. After that, start measuring again. You must always be constantly aware of where you are - that way when you make a change you can measure exactly how much you've achieved and thereby prove the power of process. Process is your compass, but if you're in the dark you'll never see where you've come from or where you need to go.

- TPN