Principles
Successful companies and leading government organisations show they have balance in the principles they apply. Balance is about analysing situations and making proper choices.
Know
A good chess player knows his openings and systems. A better chess player also considers improvements and new steps to be taken.
Most play systems are very well documented. New moves are made on the playing field itself. To what level and detail is documentation useful? When do we expect people to start thinking for themselves instead of simply following procedures?
We typically make process maps from which everyone understands the business logic. Actual procedures and instructions are costly and difficult to maintain. So why not put more effort into improvement?
Control
A volleyball player can smash the ball with all his strength or just tip it over the net. Both can be effective, but when do you use power and when tact?
The dilemma is about balancing the controls to keep the grip on your process, but not to kill creativity and flexibility.
Organisational controls and management systems are the same. Some risks and priorities have to be followed strictly, while other business goals require a fuzzy logic. For instance, the 5S model of Lean promises highly efficient work, but what does it say about the effectiveness?
Smart process performance indicators will tell you that you are in control, but will also indicate where improvement is needed.
Share
Handing over the baton is a very delicate action. Holding on too long means wasting time, while handing it over too loosely means losing the game. This is the dilemma of any organisation- how do we control the hand-offs in the cross company processes?
Breaking the silos starts with knowing the cross company processes from the front to the tail end. A process map is a very powerful tool. However, horizontal alignment starts with bringing people together and analysing points of improvement in a workshop.
Improve
The customer is more demanding than ever, professional standards constantly increase, and more complex goals need to be realised. By and large, the need for improvement itself is increasing.
The dilemma is, how do we realise continuous improvement instead of fragmented suboptimal efficiency projects?
Lean and 6Sigma are very well established techniques for improvement, but how to realise strategic and horizontal alignment is yet to be discovered. We have found that by actually engaging people in process design and realising improvement through workshop and process simulations, improvements are far more effective.
Show
Many companies claim client satisfaction. Their surveys show excellent results. But have they asked the right questions? Is the voice of the customer actually measured throughout their processes, or do they just perform a yearly evaluation? The dilemma we have found is that many companies only implement client surveys as indicators for improvement; not many do to continuously manage customer values from front to tail.
We typically also engage customers in process design, as well as in setting up performance indicators. If you manage customer values in your process, you show what you’re worth. Go for the Gold!
Do the Process Check Up