Touchy-Feely Stuff

by Don Harkey

When people ask me what I do, I tell them that I own a consulting company. When people ask me what I consult, I tell them "process improvement, strategic planning, vision and mission generation... that kind of thing". I usually tell them that I am an engineer at that point, and then they really seem puzzled. What does the "touchy-feely" stuff like vision and mission have to do with process improvement?

Last week, I met with a trainer/coach and we were talking about how different "consultants" always do very different things. A good analogy might be in the field of marketing. A marketing consultant might really be a graphic designer, a product placement expert, a marketing strategist, an advertisement consultant, or maybe a marketing specialist in a specific area like technology. The point is that each field is complex, but rather then try to explain all of that, consultants often over simplify. Almost every consultant "specializes" in something.

My "specialty" is process improvement. I can work with any company to find significant improvements on any process. What is a "process"? Everything is a process, whether it is defined or not. You have followed several processes already today from getting dressed this morning to turning on your computer. Organizations have multiple processes interacting everyday, some deliberate and some undefined. By focusing on key processes, an organization can become more efficient and provide better quality to their customers. What are the key processes? Perhaps even more importantly, how do we make the process improvements not only "stick", but continue to improve?

The goal is to get organizations to understand their key processes and continuously improve them. One of my goals for my clients is for them is to get them where they no longer need me. How do we accomplish this? This is where the "touchy-feely" stuff comes into play.

The first step for any organization is to understand its core purpose. What is truly important? What is it they are trying to accomplish? Without knowing this, process improvement efforts can actually hurt and even cripple an organization.

Imagine a company who applies process improvement to their customer service process. They decide that their goal is to cut down the average call time and the total cost of customer service. They outsource the calls to India and provide them with a strict script designed to keep the call length at a minimum. They figure out that the average customer will wait 10 minutes without getting too upset, so they design their capacity around an average wait of 10 minutes. Now take a step back. As a customer, does this sound like a company you want to buy a computer from?

Zappos was recently in the news for their unusual practice of NOT using average call time as a success metric in customer service calls. They instead looked at whether they successfully resolved the customer's problems. This is substantially harder to measure and doesn't analyze as cleanly, but Zappos has a different goal than the first unnamed company. Zappos has a clear vision of who they are. They know what their purpose is. They remain very connected with their customers (you can even follow the Zappos CEO on Twitter at http://twitter.com/zappos).

When I work with a new organization for the first time, I have to make a quick judgment of whether they understand their own organizational purpose. Some do, some don't. Few have it clearly outlined. Before we embark on significant process improvement efforts, the organization MUST understand what "improvement" means. Does it mean reduced costs? Does it mean improved quality? Does it mean growth?

Once an organization knows where it wants to go, the next step is for them to understand how they will get there. This is where the strategic planning comes in. While the "how" is important, perhaps an even better question is "who". This is the key to "continuously" improving a process. Real and continuous improvement is only accomplished when EVERYONE in the organization becomes involved. Management must understand their role and must utilize the talents (both realized and hidden) of all the people within their organization.

One we have a core purpose, I like to work with front line supervisors and managers to help them see what their people can actually do. I have worked with organizations who have treated their bottom level employees as commodities for many years suddenly discover hidden talents and passions from unexpected places. One hourly floor worker who disliked his job discovered a way to save the company $50,000 per year in waste. This employee was suddenly energized to find more improvements and has gone from an "underperformer" to getting promoted to supervisor. This is when REAL change begins to occur.

Too often, management does not like to focus on the "touchy-feely" aspects of organizational improvement. That is probably because they have never applied it with the nuts and bolts of process improvement. Once an organization knows who they are and acknowledges the talent of their people, I can teach them a plethora of tools they can use to understand and improve their processes. These are the "hard" skills that management loves to jump to, often before they are ready.

This week, we are going to talk more about these "touchy-feely" business principles and how important they are to any organization.