In many, if not most knowledge/office worker processes, the people are analogous to the machines in a manufacturing or physical process.
I've seen a lot of talk recently about the importance of attitude over other factors in employees and of course, this is nothing new. When it comes to performance of people in the different processes that occur in business, a better more accurate and powerful way to look at it is suitability. Suitability, typically encompasses the traits that underlie most of what determines a person's level of performance in a job or task. These include a person's key personality traits and natural tendencies, work and task preferences, motivations, decision styles and attitudes.
In knowledge/office worker processes such as accounting, sales, administrative processes etc., not only are the people often like the machines in manufacturing...
Variation is the difference between what you expect to see and what you actually observe (expected vs. observed). One of the major influences on business by W. Edwards Deming was this focus on understanding variation and eliminating the portions of which you can control early in the process to improve. Much of Japanese business practice is rooted in this as is Six Sigma and to a lesser extent, the Lean buzzword programs.
It is critical because without rationalizing variation, you have a high probability of investing in things that compound rather than reduce problems. Using Deming's terminology, there are 2 main causes of variation, assignable (more commonly called special) and common. Assignable or special causes are those you can identify and remove. The common causes of variation are those that you can't...
How do you improve processes effectively? Here are some initial ideas:
Recently, I was asked by a business owner, who was skeptical of process improvement approaches due to his experiences in his Fortune 500 past. He, like myself, had witnessed programs go terribly wrong, through a mix of recipe-driven approaches, sub-optimization and politics(rob Peter to pay Paul, as well as poor leadership.
The first thing to remind people is the importance of HOW you do things (processes). How you do things does determine how well your people will do them. How you do things does determine how much of specific resources (money, time, technology….) you will use. How you do things does determine how your customers will respond. How you do things does actually determine how well and how long you can do them well…. Without understanding and focusing on how you do things, it is very difficult to solve problems, to improve...
The Danger of the Buzzword program in organizations
Lack of brain activity i.e. thinking
Over the last 25 years, there have been all kinds of buzzwords in this area including TQM, BPR, Lean, AGILE, Six Sigma, ERP, MRPII, TOC, WCM, Kaizen, CIT, CAPM and quite a number of others.
Unfortunately, if you implement a buzzword program, like you would follow a recipe for an entrée, more often than not , the results will be either negative or brief. Unfortunately as well, the reality is that this is a common scenario.
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- In some cases, it's because the buzzword chosen is due to the flavor of the day or flavor of the boss and does not fit...
People + Process = Productivity
The most valuable assets of a 20th-century company were its production equipment. The most valuable asset of a 21st-century institution, whether business or non-business, will be its knowledge workers and their productivity. Peter Drucker
Key Process Optimization Posts
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