Maximizing Value from Process Reviews
Focused attention is fundamental for timely and effective assessment
Progress doesn’t happen haphazardly. Businesses today direct a lot of energy and resources to improve. Digital transformation, hyped by the recent pandemic, is paving the trail to the “promised land” and also boasts an extremely broad reach in the business improvement arena.
This endless spectrum of opportunity scope and solutions, can defocus improvement teams towards a blunt and often misguided approach. Projects become too big to swallow, generate cost overruns, have lower impact, or simply miss the target altogether.
Here are a few considerations if you are about to embarked on an assessment or process review.
Focus, focus, focus
Maintaining a sharper focus on project objectives guides the entire change cycle through discovery, definition, design, implementation and follow-up. Within the purview of improvement, the assessment is an essential component . They can easily go astray with endless banter and drama. Having a focal theme not only helps channel relevant dialogue and significantly minimizes review session time.
Review themes can include:
“Identify Paint-Points” (identifying problematic areas, root-cause, and relative impact)
Increase function-focused by reducing administrative burden (target labour intensive activities, clerical/administrative distractions - automation candidates)
Identifying paper-bound process (a huge potential in the new digital world and carbon footprint reduction)
Legacy Systems (exposure, candidates for digital transformation - often goes along with previous points)
Digital Transformation (impact on current/future process)
Classifying business critical processes (exposure to system failures, potential weaknesses, hacks)
Revenue, cost, profit or margin influencers
In-house versus out-sourced analysis (should we, or should we not be doing this activity and why?)
Corporate image assessment (internal and external)
Risk exposure (health and safety, environmental, financial, legal, etc)
Conformance (to vision, strategy, policy, guideline, legislation, ‘right-practice’) – often combined with the previous point.
Certainly, not an exhaustive list and there can be multiples related themes. The caveat being, more diminishes focus. Dialogue becomes convoluted and subjective (opinion vs factual) simply due to time constraints for appropriate dialogue or research. It diminishes the teams’ momentum and demeanor during (and after) review sessions when sessions appear random or disorderly.
Plan, Prepare, Be Diligent
Keep sessions short and engaged to avoid wandering minds. Likely staff have their daily workload piling up. Having focus reduces session chatter and sharpens the dialogue toward more relevant and significant outcomes. It’s also helps to mentally prepare staff allowing pre-session time to reflect on and organize their own thoughts related to the ensuing session. Pre-compiling supporting documentation translates to objective dialogue and validation. Better to be running out of the gate rather than spending time and energy gathering data and disrupting sessions.
Get the Story Out - Build Momentum
Avoid “fear of the unknown”. Inform staff of progress and solicit feedback as much as possible. It makes implementation easier when change comes down.
There is a certain degree of momentum generated from review sessions often overlooked or underestimated by leadership. Discovery and implementation of (good) ideas do not have to be complicated – often the simple ones go a long way. Addressing low-hanging fruit
demonstrates management commitment,
things are moving,
things are improving,
It’s because of them.
The energy created builds momentum buy-in for the larger battles that require more effort, but have greater impact. Caution, to getting ahead of yourself implementing knee-jerk remedies that may create issues come implementation time.
In summary, without a doubt there is a “buzz” or energy generated from a well-orchestrated review or assessment. Veterans sharing knowledge and experience, young minds absorbing it, and most importantly, the eureka moments seeding initiative towards a better future.
A well-directed, methodical process review yields significant intrinsic value in the overall business improvement journey, and never a waste of time.