| Process Efficiency and the Need for Control |
| Invention Development Advice - Business Planning | |||
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There are two aspects to consider when designing business processes: mechanical efficiency and the human need to feel in control. A good process is a balance of mechanical efficiency and the empowerment of the people involved. 1. Given a process, break down the sub-processes into standalone chunk. 2. Identify those chunks that are the most mindless and repetitive. These are best suited to technological automation. Make the input and output transparent and obvious to the people involved. 3. Repeat step 2 as you start working with the more complex sub-processes with multiple inputs and more convoluted operations. These may be handled by people, or a combination of people and technology. 4. Identify the key decision and check points between the chunks. People must be involved at these points. Provide sufficient controls – “OK”, “Stop”, “Change” or “More Information”. It may even be good to create new decision and check points for the sake of people empowerment. 5. Listen to feedback from the people involved and tweak, tweak, tweak. Beware the temptation to automate and integrate everything without due consultation with the people involved.
People are an indispensable part of business processes. The temptation to implement technology to take over as much as possible from the messy thinking humans is very strong. Technology is inexpensive and powerful. Mechanical efficiency is easy to implement and measure. No wonder technology is often seen as the magic answer. Just because a sub-process can be replaced by efficient technology does not mean it should be. Sometimes, it is worthwhile keeping a laborious manual sub-process, especially if the alternative is alienation of the people involved.
A fully integrated process can be hard to troubleshoot or to reconfigure as your organisational needs change. It quickly becomes too hard to improve. Having people involved in key points in a process gives your organisation the opportunity to innovate. These are the points where your people can intervene in the process, and to try new things.
If you involve people from the beginning, you may not need expensive change management. A crappy process forced upon people won’t survive long after implementation. It is amazing how quickly people work around or abandon a crappy process. And when people feel helpless within a process, their stress levels goes up; and quality, productivity and morale suffer.
By Zern Liew To find out how Zern can help you communicate or work better, visit http://eicolab.com.au/services/ and http://eidesign.com.au/services/ For more tips, tools and innovation thought-provokers, visit http://eicolab.com.au/blog/
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