Tag Archives: process improvement

The Overlooked Lens of Process and Efficiency

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From my associate, Janice Giannini.

Efficiency is the lifeblood of business. From assembly lines to boardrooms, the pursuit of smoother processes and higher productivity drives innovation and success. Yet, for all its importance, discussions about efficiency often feel predictable. They focus on incremental improvements to tools and workflows, missing deeper, more human layers of the conversation. What about the emotional undercurrents of collaboration? The unseen work that keeps processes running?  The messiness that is essential to spark creativity?

By broadening our lens, we can uncover fresh insights into process design to address the persistent barriers that limit progress. Today, we explore four frequently neglected dimensions of process and efficiency. By thinking at deeper levels, organizations can unlock their full potential.

 

1. The Emotional Intelligence Lens

When we think of process efficiency, we often envision systems: smooth workflows, optimized tools, and clear metrics. What’s missing is the human element, specifically the role of emotional intelligence (EQ) in driving operational success. EQ is the ability to understand and manage emotions, both our own and those of others. While typically associated with leadership or team dynamics, it also profoundly impacts process efficiency.

Processes don’t run in a vacuum; they are about the humans in the loop and rely on people. Teams with high EQ navigate interpersonal challenges with fewer delays and higher morale. Miscommunications can cause costly breakdowns in efficiency. A team with credible emotional awareness can address underlying frustrations before they escalate into conflicts that disrupt workflows.

Processes designed for maximum efficiency can inadvertently create stress. Tight deadlines, rigid workflows, or overemphasizing incomplete metrics can disenfranchise employees. This level of rigidity leads to burnout, reduced productivity, and even turnover—hardly efficient outcomes. Integrating EQ into process design means considering the emotional impact of workflows and building flexibility where needed.

From a practical solution point of view, organizations can cultivate EQ through leadership development, promoting empathy in team interactions, and fostering a culture of psychological safety. Employees who feel heard and valued engage more fully, driving smoother processes.

 

2. The “Invisible Work” Perspective/Lens

Every efficient process has a hidden foundation: the invisible work that supports its success. This invisible work includes emotional labor, informal knowledge sharing, and the countless small tasks that often go unnoticed and are critical to a smooth workflow.

Why does invisible work matter? Consider a team that runs a high-stakes product launch. While the visible process might include deadlines, deliverables, and roles, real efficiency hinges on invisible efforts. A senior team member mentoring a junior colleague or a manager mediating tensions behind the scenes might save hours of missteps and confusion. These behaviors can be the difference between success and failure.

Traditional performance metrics do not include this invisible work, consequently undervaluing it. One significant example of overlooked invisible work is emotional labor, which disproportionately affects women and minorities. Organizations must investigate these contributions to take advantage of opportunities to strengthen processes.

To elevate the invisible, companies can adopt systems that track and reward invisible work to address this, such as recognizing mentorship or creating knowledge-sharing platforms. Highlighting and supporting these contributions ensures they don’t fall through the cracks, improving overall efficiency.

 

3. The Role of Chaos and Creativity in Process Design

Efficiency is typically associated with order, but the most effective processes often incorporate elements of chaos and creativity. Controlled chaos, periods of disruption or experimentation, can challenge rigid structures and yield innovative solutions that traditional methods overlook.

Over-optimization has unintended consequences. Processes designed to be perfectly efficient can have undesirable unintended consequences. They need more room for adaptability and creativity, essential in today’s fast-changing business environment. An over-optimized workflow might excel in routine tasks but collapse under the weight of an unexpected challenge.

Organizations can intentionally disrupt their processes through hackathons, brainstorming sprints, or cross-functional collaboration. These disruptive actions frequently discover breakthroughs, creating a safe space for employees to question the status quo, experiment with new ideas, and identify previously invisible inefficiencies. Stepping out of the zone is necessary to harness chaos for innovation.

Consider the tech company that encourages employees to spend 20% of their time on passion projects or the design firm that rethinks workflows during innovation workshops. Some organizations set up separate teams in different locations, releasing them from the day-to-day constraints. These practices inject fresh ideas into static systems. By balancing structure with chaos, businesses can create processes that are not only efficient but also resilient and innovative.

 

 4. The Barriers to Process and Efficiency

Despite our best intentions, efficiency efforts often need to catch up. What stands in the way? Understanding these barriers, from cognitive biases to organizational culture, is critical to designing better processes.

‍Human biases, such as the sunk cost fallacy or confirmation bias, often hinder efficiency. Teams may cling to inefficient processes simply because they’ve invested significant time or resources.

Overcoming these biases requires a willingness to evaluate existing workflows, even when it’s uncomfortable critically.

Even the best-designed process improvements can fail if employees resist them. This resistance often stems from fear of change, failure, or loss of autonomy. Creating a culture of trust and open communication is essential to overcoming this hurdle.

Processes naturally grow more complex over time, especially in large organizations. This “complexity creep” can erode efficiency, making once-effective workflows cumbersome and outdated. Regular audits and simplification efforts are essential to combat this issue.

Practical strategies to break through barriers include:

  • Conducting root-cause analyses to identify bottlenecks.
  • Empowering employees to challenge inefficient norms.
  • Seeking outside perspectives to uncover blind spots.

By addressing these barriers head-on, organizations can unlock greater efficiency and foster continuous improvement.

 

Summary

Companies often treat process and efficiency as purely technical challenges through the lens of better tools and tighter workflow. But efficiency is, at its core, a human undertaking. By exploring the emotional dynamics of teamwork, recognizing invisible work, embracing controlled chaos, and addressing systemic barriers, organizations can take a more holistic approach to improvement.

Efficiency isn’t just about doing things faster or cheaper—it’s about creating processes that empower people to do their best work. It balances structure and creativity, visibility and acknowledgment, logic, and emotion. By rethinking efficiency through these lenses, businesses can achieve higher productivity and greater resilience, innovation, and employee satisfaction. Ultimately, the most efficient process works with people, not against them.

The Most Significant Broken Process of Your Life

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Note in a bottleFrom my Associate Janice Giannini.

Is Effective Communications!  It is a profound weakness across the board, wreaking havoc across all aspects of life.

A recent Quote from Axios Short Brevity illustrates this.

“It has never been harder to get people focused on what matters most, and the work from anywhere reality has turned communications into a profound and critical weakness for every company, every leader, every rising star, and every restless worker,” Stewart Butterfield, CEO ofSlack, told us that, in a hypothetical 10,000-employee company that spends $1Billion on payroll, 50 to 60% of the average person’s time is spent on communications in some way. in some way.  (Italic is mine – JG.)

‍Why does it matter?

  • Money wasted due to ineffective communications? Billions.
  • Profit left on the table in your business? Billions.
  • There is always time to do it over, but never time to do it right. Why?
  • Since 1990 US marriage rate is tanking  (50% decline).
  • US divorce rate is painfully high (20%).
  • US loneliness epidemic is skyrocketing.

‍Just imagine the positive outcomes possible with sincere, clear communication.

Recommendations to achieve effective communications:

  • Know your objective first; if it isn’t clear- STOP and get one.
  • Define effective communications as the other people get the message you intend to send. It’s about the message, not you.
  • Follow/ instill  a process:

‍         o  State what you need them to hear. Think first, talk second.

         o  Ask what they need to hear.

         o  Say what you mean in simple respectful words.

         o  State actions/ follow-up clearly.

         o  Sum up, repeat what you said, and ask others “Did you get what you needed”?

  • ‍Repeat process as needed.

‍

Summary

Effective communications will save you time and money across all aspects of your life. It may take longer to prepare communications using few words that are simple and direct. However, the communication with people will net better outcomes. If it goes over 1 page, nobody reads it.

For follow-up on how to, Axios’ Smart Brevity is a place to start.

Wait! Don’t Mess Up Our Process

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Our crack failure analysis team in Quality Engineering received the first call when a hi-tech manufacturing process started turning out defective products. They rapidly went to work, examining process data, taking measurements, assessing raw materials, asking questions about operators’ training levels, and calming down panicking manufacturing managers. Most often, the team defined the problem and corrected it within an hour or so. The team asked, “What changed?”

However, some of the most frustrating problems to identify and correct fell under the category of innovation. Yes…innovation—when operators responsible for an important step in the process thought they would take the initiative to change the process without asking for permission or telling anyone. Someone had an idea but did not test it or implement it in a controlled way.

We want our employees to be creative and look for improvements, but innovation is a process in and of itself. How do we encourage new ideas? How do we identify the best? How do we test them? How do we implement the best in a systematic, controlled way?

In crucial manufacturing or business processes, innovations should be tested outside the ongoing process. This makes sure the change to a particular step in the process produces the required result in quality and efficiency. After passing that analysis, the step can then be introduced to the ongoing process in a closely observed experiment where all affected participants are aware of the change and on board with it.

Innovation itself is a process. Innovative organizations encourage good ideas and let all employees know how ideas will be collected, evaluated, and put into practice. Recognition and rewards can make this process work in all segments of the organization. Those creative rogues can be exceptional contributors if they have a well-recognized innovation process where their ideas bear fruit.

Process Excellence Progress: Navigating Pitfalls and Powering Success

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Starting any process improvement initiative can be challenging, and it’s not uncommon for organizations to encounter various errors and oversights. Here are ten of the biggest mistakes often made by teams in their early stages of process excellence initiatives:

‍1.    Lack of Clear Objectives: Defining clear, measurable goals for the process improvement initiative can lead to clarity and efficiency. With specific objectives, it’s easier to gauge success or progress.

2.    Need for Stakeholder Engagement: Not involving key stakeholders, including those directly affected by changes, can lead to resistance and a lack of buy-in. Engaging stakeholders early and often is crucial for success.

3.    Ignoring Current Process Understanding: Not fully understanding or documenting the current processes before attempting to improve them can lead to misguided efforts. A thorough analysis of the existing processes is necessary to identify actual issues and areas for improvement.

4.    Underestimating Resource Requirements: When organizations grossly underestimate the time, budget, and personnel needed for successful process improvement, resource constraints hinder the initiative’s progress.

5.    Overlooking Change Management: Change management is a critical component of process improvement. Neglecting the human aspect of change can lead to resistance, low morale, and a failure to adopt new processes.

6.    Jumping to Solutions Without Proper Analysis: Implementing solutions without a thorough problem analysis often leads to suboptimal or counterproductive results. It’s essential to take the time to properly diagnose issues before jumping to solutions.

7.    Failing to Establish Metrics for Success: It requires defining what success looks like and how it will be measured to evaluate the effectiveness of the improvement efforts. Clear metrics allow for the tracking of progress and outcomes.

8.    Inadequate Training and Communication: To avoid confusion and non-compliance, provide sufficient training and communication about the new processes. People need to understand what is changing, why, and how it impacts their work.

9.    Ignoring the Need for Continuous Improvement: Process improvement is not a one-time event but a continuous journey. Organizations need to establish mechanisms for ongoing improvement, orthey may find their processes becoming outdated or inefficient over time.

10.  Overcomplicating the Process: Sometimes, in an effort to achieve perfection, organizations over-engineer solutions, making them too complex to implement or sustain. Simplicity and practicality should be guiding principles in process improvement.

Avoiding these common pitfalls can significantly increase the chances of a successful process improvement initiative.

In addition to the pitfalls, there are several other key considerations and best practices that can help ensure the success of your process improvement initiatives:

‍1.    Prioritize Processes for Improvement: Identify and prioritize which processes need improvement based on their impact on the organization’s goals and objectives. Trying to improve everything at once can spread resources too thin.

2.    Employee Involvement and Ownership: Encourage employees to be part of the solution by involving them in the process improvement initiatives. Engaging diverse perspectives can foster a sense of ownership and commitment among the team members.

3.    Utilize Proven Methodologies: Employ established methodologies like Lean, Six Sigma, or Total Quality Management (TQM) to guide your process improvement efforts. These methodologies provide structured approaches that have been tested and proven over time.

4.    Data-Driven Decision Making: Base your decisions on data and facts rather than assumptions or intuition. Data-driven insights can lead to more effective and efficient improvements.

5.    Regular Review and Adaptation: Continuously review the progress of your initiatives and be prepared to adapt your approach based on what is or isn’t working. Flexibility and adaptability are key in responding to new challenges or insights.

6.    Celebrate Small Wins: Recognizing and celebrating even minor improvements can boost morale and encourage continued effort toward process improvement. It’s important to acknowledge any progress made, even when seemingly incremental.

7.    Risk Management: Anticipate potential risks and challenges associated with process changes and develop contingency plans. This proactive approach helps minimize disruptions.

8.    Sustainable Implementation: Ensure that all improvements suggested or made can be sustained over the long term. Note: this may involve changing processes and altering your underlying systems, structures, and cultures to support the new way of doing things.

9.    Customer-Centric Approach: Always consider the impact of process improvements on your customers. The ultimate goal of any process improvement should be to enhance customer satisfaction and value.

10.  Leadership and Support: Strong leadership and support from top management are crucial for driving process improvement initiatives. Leadership should actively sponsor and champion these efforts to ensure they receive the necessary resources and attention.

‍By considering these additional perspectives, you can further enhance the effectiveness of your process improvement initiatives and avoid common pitfalls that might hinder their success.

Fix the Toaster

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Do you want to fix the toaster, or do you keep scraping the burnt part off the toast? It seems like a simple question, but hear me out.

In business and life, we get what we accept. If so, why would we continue to accept an unacceptable outcome rather than address the core problem? These questions may seem ridiculous at first blush.

Now, let’s take that experience into our corporate hallways.

When was the last time you asked yourself where examples of non-productive behavior have crept in as people had to battle the problems caused by all the pressures of the recent past?

Where are past decisions continuing to cause people in your organization to struggle or fall further behind?

Where are leaders and managers asking people to do the equivalent of rolling bowling balls uphill every day to get things done? Are other top leaders in your organization even noticing this has become commonplace? Are they stopping to wonder when their people will be burning out and won’t seem as committed as they once were?

So many people get overwhelmed by the drumbeat of day-to-day responsibilities. They don’t always stop to consider how their decisions impact their direct reports, who are just trying to make a living.

I compare it to driving a speedboat across a lake. The Captain can be so focused on getting to the other side that they become oblivious. They don’t notice that their wake is flooding all the properties along the shoreline.

If your organization has put formal process improvement initiatives on hold during the epidemic, it’s time to take a fresh look at opportunities. While looking for areas to explore, don’t forget to start with how your senior executives are running the business.

How seamlessly does your organization operate? Please go much deeper in your thinking process than whether or not you have an up-to-date organization chart. You and your top team need to examine whether your organization is coalescing around the best ways to get things done.

It can be enlightening to see how things are getting done versus how they are supposed to be getting done.

While some people may smile and say, “Great job innovating,” others will be shocked to learn that many of the checks and balances they thought were in place are being ignored for expediency.

Where do you expect your firm to be on that continuum when you take the time to examine it? Are your teams operating like a well-oiled kanban system or more like a TV comedy show?

Anytime the answer is different from what you had hoped for, look at how easy it is for someone at any level to get things done. Examine your processes for efficiency and effectiveness. Look vertically (relationships with people above or below in the hierarchy) and horizontally (across functional disciplines). Imagine fully capitalizing on foresight, insight, common sense, and proven processes to help you run your business and increase your chances for long-term success.

Editor’s Note:This article was originally published in American Executive Magazine

New Ways to Think About Business Processes

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From my associate Grant Tate.

Our normal template for thinking about business processes includes a smoothly flowing set of steps leading to a desired result or product. Each step has a specific purpose with clearly stated input and outputs.

Given that, we decide how each step should be accomplished, for instance, by a human being, by a machine, or by information technology. Manufacturing an automobile or a silicon wafer requires intricately engineered processes. Administrative processes include payroll processing or paying bills.

If there is a high volume of work to be done, such as manufacturing a half-million cars a year, everyone knows the process needs to be effective, efficient, and error-free. It’s easy to visualize an auto factory at work, or a huge headquarters building filled with administrative workers, all diligently working on their steps of a big process. Because these were important, over the years, Industrial engineers developed various tools, such as Cycle Time Reduction, designed to create or improve processes.

But do these tools apply to modern 21st-century organizations where twenty to thirty percent of the workers are remote? Can we apply the processes used while working in the big administrative building to individuals working from different locations and connected by telecommunications? How do we design work in the new environment of remote or hybrid work? Let’s consider how work gets done.

  1. Individuals, whether remote or in-house, work on their assigned tasks as part of a large process. Individual roles are set by job description or by the set of assigned tasks. Accounting processes are good examples of this. For instance, a remote team member could be responsible for sending invoices. another for receiving payments. Coordination among team members is minimal because the overall information technology system provides the linkages.
  2. The team leader determines priorities and assigns tasks to each team member. This is the choice of control freaks but is almost impossible to manage in a fast-moving, agile environment.
  3. The team leader sets priorities, and the team uses Jira or other agile methods to determine work schedules and tasks. Team members self-select tasks to work on. This methodology works well in matrix organizations and software development. Work processes are dynamic, constantly adjusting to the schedule and the tasks at hand.

 

If a company leader wants to increase efficiency and effectiveness by improving the company processes, then the leader must consider how the work gets done and what tools to use to reach the goals.

If the team must react to constantly changing demands, giving the members better tools, such as Jira or other agile software, would help. Cycle Time Reduction (CTR)1 would not apply to that situation. On the other hand, for the parts of the organization using more stable processes, CTR might be an appropriate tool if steps of the process consider the work capacity of individual remote workers. When designing a process using CTR, some steps might require several people working together. When workers are remote, such cooperation might be impracticable, requiring steps to be designed to be accomplished by one individual.

If an organization is seeking to improve its operations, it is important to define bottlenecks in its operations, set priorities, and decide what tools to use to improve the situation. Remote or hybrid configurations require new thinking, new approaches, and retraining of leaders and team members.

Are you ready?

Do You Want Your Business To Thrive? It’s About the People

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From my associate Janice Giannini.

In today’s rapidly changing environment, companies either thrive or die. Thriving requires closely integrating the business and people imperatives into the processes driving the business. Inadequate recognition and integration will fail to deliver the needed business results. I opine that looking through a few different lenses might be helpful:

  • Are you focused on the right things? How do you know? Typically, any number of metrics are in place that “answer” this question. If the metrics are going in the right direction, you’re focusing on the right things. Right? Well, that conclusion assumes that the environment around you is relatively stable and similar to the past. Is that a valid assumption?
  • If you are focused on the right things, are you doing them the right way? How do we know? Again there may be metrics in place to measure the “wasted energy” in a business. In many cases, the metrics are comparisons to the past. Is the “wasted energy” in the industry getting better or worse? This question only makes sense if the environment is similar to the past. It doesn’t answer the question, “how much better could you do if your processes are highly effective/efficient in an environment in constant flux?”
  • When looking at the operations in a business to streamline and improve operational efficiency and effectiveness, the technical aspects of these processes typically take center stage. And while necessary and critical, they are not sufficient sans the people.

 

So, what does it look like to do the right stuff in the right way in a highly fluid environment? How much change is required? How do you get everybody on board? And what gets in the way? A rapidly changing environment requires high degrees of adjustments and modifications.

These last few questions are critical. Perhaps the most unsettling query is how to get folks on board. Everybody must be on board at the outset to thrive and reach the business’ potential. When people are on board, it is easier to define how much process change is required and what gets in the way.

Greater awareness of what causes people to change may enable a simple approach to forging a path through these murky waters. Moreover, incorporating that understanding of what causes people to change into the alignment process leads to better results.

I love the simple way John Maxwell articulated the four reasons people change:

  • They hurt enough that they need to
  • They see enough that they are inspired to
  • They learn enough that they want to
  • They receive enough that they are able to

 

As business leaders at the Board, C-Suite, as well as tactical levels, how are you incorporating this knowledge into the processes you use to:

  • Strategically drive the enterprise
  • Align execution processes in the company to the strategic goals, and
  • Resource the operations to achieve or exceed your stretch goals

 

A point to ponder: “how much better could you do if your processes are highly effective/efficient in an environment in constant flux?”