At The Whiteboard

The “ASS²” Method of Resolving Conflict.

February 14, 2014Blog


ASS2 MethodYep, you read that right – ASS “squared”.  I’m tired from a busy two weeks after vacation and I’m feeling cheeky.  I also met a Canadian guy while on vacation that owned a donkey in Albania named Richard (it’s a long story).  It’s my blog and I’ll swear if I want to.  I also hate mnemonic sayings that you forget.  You will never forget the ASS2

As consultants, Ruth and I recommend a lot of different things to a lot of different people. We see some recurring themes.  One of them is:

How do I deal with difficult situations at work?

I’m an avid conflict avoider.  My natural instincts are to apologize profusely, take all necessary actions to avoid said conflict again, and cry privately while staring at myself in the bathroom mirror. Not really a great coping mechanism.

The better option is to calm your emotions and deal with the issue as soon as you can.  Organizations large and small, public and private are all subject to workplace conflict.  Differing personalities, competition, cultures, work styles, thinking styles, communication styles, and lack of clarity in roles and responsibilities are all potential sources for conflict in the workplace.  When you confront your conflict, or have someone confront you – use the ASS2 method.

6 Tips to Resolving Conflict

  1. Actively Listen: Use silence, nod, maintain eye contact, show open body language, and use kindness and curiosity to probe for more info.

“Tell me more?”

“Help me understand!”

  1. Say it back: Repeat what you heard in your own words.

“It sounds like the tone of my email really upset you.”

“Let me try to paraphrase. You are unclear where your role ends and mine begins?”

  1. Sympathize: Show your genuine concern for their emotions.

“I can see how that would make you feel.”

“I understand your frustration with this situation.”

  1. Appreciate: Thank them for confronting you or for taking the time to hear your concerns.

“I appreciate you bringing this up to me.”

“Thanks for being so open to hear my concerns.”

  1. Sum up your Options: Allow some discussion to analyze the situation.

“Let’s talk about how we move forward from here.”

“Let’s consider the options.”

  1. Solve: Create a solution that results in benefits for both parties.

“Can we both try to….?”

“Perhaps to mitigate the risk of this occurring again, we can….”

Conflict Resolution

Confronting conflict is not easy.  Hearing constructive feedback from a team member, peer, or leader is equally difficult. Respect one another’s feelings and emotions. Not treating one another with respect makes you the square root of ASS2 (a bit of an ASS).

Having trouble with a team member, peer, or leader in your organization?  Contact us to learn more about resolving conflicts in the workplace in the best way possible. Tell us what you think of the ASS2 method and what your results were if you tried it out.

In the meantime I’m going to spend some time thinking of more shocking yet amusing mnemonics for you readers in hopes of you having a laugh while learning.

Until Next Time,

Nicole

Kindness & Curiosity in Coaching

February 10, 2014Blog

One of our most favourite things to do is to teach. And when teaching, one of our most favourite topics to cover is how to be an effective Coach at work. (We’ve coachwritten about it here, here, and here.) And when teaching about being a Coach, one of our most favourite concepts is that of “Kindness & Curiosity”. We consistently get feedback from our students that this way of coaching is transformative for them.

I remember learning about it from my Mum when I was a little kid. We were driving behind someone who was exceedingly slow, and she said “well, maybe her passenger has a pot of hot soup on her lap, and they’re taking it to someone who’s sick.” Another time, we were cut off by someone who was speeding and weaving, and she said “maybe his wife’s having a baby and he’s trying to get to the hospital”.

I know. Kind of far-fetched, but it could be true. And although it doesn’t make it right, it does give you some context and make you think.

The next time I was introduced to this phrase was by an executive coach. I was talking to her about a difficult situation I was facing in the office – a fellow Director had shouted at me in a public place about something she believed one of my employees had done. I was taken aback and reacted quite defensively. My coach said to me, “Ruth, what kind of day, or week, or life must this woman be dealing with that makes her act like this?” And then she said the phrase I have never forgotten:

Kindness and curiosity leave no room for anger and resentment.

Oddly enough, the same situation presented itself again only a week later. With the same person. Instead of reacting, I looked at her and said in an even tone, “how can I help you with this?”

It was like I poured a bucket of water on her. She stopped, looked flustered, and completely changed her tone. She was still angry, but she was able to be conversational. (I later found out she was facing serious personal problems. It wasn’t my job to coach her on her behaviour, but it was my responsibility to respond professionally. Being kind and curious allowed me to do that. Oh, and believe it or not, we are now friends.)

How to Make It Work in Coaching

Ok, so you get it. But maybe you’re thinking, how is this any different than “do unto others” – you know, being nice to people is important, and when we coach people we should be nice. coach1

It’s a little different. The Golden Rule says we should treat others the way we would want to be treated. In coaching this applies because we should treat each other with respect, dignity and fairness.

On the other hand, the principle of Kindness and Curiosity applies specifically to a person’s natural tendency to make assumptions and jump to conclusions which may frame our approach and our words. It allows us to step back and stop from taking things personally, which allows us to “take the high road” and hopefully direct the conversation in a constructive manner.

So the next time you have to coach an employee in a difficult or confrontational situation, be kind and curious. It will keep you from getting angry and resentful, and your coaching session will be much more productive and effective.

I’d love to know if you give it a shot – let me know how it goes!

Ruth.

PS – watch for our public course on coaching, soon to be scheduled. Hopefully this spring!

Guest Blog: Musings on Process & Social Media

January 31, 2014Blog,

Hi everyone! Please join us in welcoming David Keyes to the Whiteboard Consulting family. He joined us this month as Project Assistant, and is already bringing fresh eyes and a helping had to Nicole and me. We’re thrilled to have him, and of course immediately asked him to fill in as guest blogger this week while Nicole is sitting on a beach enjoying a well-deserved break.

This week David shares his thoughts on social media and processes… Enjoy!

Ruth.

Thoughts from a Process & Social Media Rookie

Hello, my name is David Keyes, I am the newest addition to the Whiteboard Consulting family and it’s a thrill and an honour to be here. My role is that of coordinator, the arranger of schedules and the booker of appointments, along with a bunch of other hats and roles when needed. As Nicole is on vacation they’ve asked me to step up and write a blog entry for this week.

I was given the task of looking at social media to see how best we can exploit this ever growing and not easily defined medium.

social-key

My first question was, “how do I translate Whiteboard Consulting, not to mention myself and my thoughts and my role here to a social media presence?”

When I went to college no one had a desktop computer, it was 1981 and a single computer still filled a room. All of my projects and promotions were done by hand, photocopying and pressing and distributing, so much work and time went into that – now a single sentence can reach millions and one needn’t get out of ones chair! Even our smallest thoughts or photos of our lunch can be beamed internationally and to enormous audiences in real time, it makes one a little careful about all those people seeing what you say/do/think! It gives a platform for everyone, everyone’s voice can be heard and it allows for connections previous generations have never been able to engage in! It’s miraculous and scary and inspiring.

While sitting in a facilitated process mapping session it dawned on me that this room full of invigorated participants furiously throwing ideas and thoughts out to be captured by a skilled facilitator on flip chart paper, was in fact an analogue version of Twitter. That perhaps all those cyber-voices and social medias were in fact like the voices in this room, brainstorming a concept.

I find I am a contradiction of naiveté and cynicism with the medium. Despite my hesitation to post online, I’m now looking forward to riding the social media trends and hopefully using it as a way to stimulate a dialogue about words and processes. Maybe rather than approaching it with hesitancy it will help us understand better who we are and what we are doing here. Perhaps it is worth sharing ideas, ideas worth reading twenty years from now.

David

Processes and the Flu Bug: 10 Surprising things they have in common.

January 16, 2014Blog

“Pam! Call my mom!”

For two weeks I have been miserable. Sneezy. Cough-ey. Stuffy head.  It is worse than the man cold.  I’ve even gone so far as to post Facebook photos of my medicine arsenal trying to elicit some extra sympathy from my old elementary school friends and random people I met at bars. I even finally went to the walk in clinic – which I never do- and the doctor told me to “get over it sweetheart” and to stop coughing into my hand and into my elbow. No sympathy from that gem.

Whether by the delirium of the flu I’m battling, or the near-fatal cocktail of NyQuil & NeoCitran, I bring to you some amazing parallels between the flu and bad processes in your organization:

1. At first, it just seems like no big deal, or nothing at all.

Was I mouth breathing last night?  Is that why my throat hurts? No, I can’t be sick.  I just can’t be. It’s so dry in here. I must need a humidifier.  I must have sleep apnea.  I’m allergic to the dogs! Every single time I get a cold I refuse to believe that it is actually happening to me.

Similarly, organizations often start by telling us that it isn’t their processes that are broken. Staff don’t have the right skill-set. Staff aren’t paid well enough to do their work.  Clients don’t understand what they’re doing.  The marketplace is changing. This is how we’ve always done it. And nothing has gone wrong…yet.

2. Something suddenly goes very, very bad.

That sore throat is still there.  The natural remedies I tried don’t seem to be working. Stuffy nose and stuffy head have arrived on the scene.  Things are really bad now and I am scared.

Red alert.  A process has gone fully AWOL.  You missed a deliverable.  The product arrived to the client late.   You missed your money back guarantee. You lost the client.  The client fired you.

3. Sometimes you cover up the problem so you can pretend its not there.11664847_BG1

Once alert mode hits, I start medicating hard and fast, almost as if to ensure I don’t have to experience the cold at all.  I run to the drug store and swipe my hand along the cold aisle getting everything I can. Daytime. Night time. Natural. Narc….just kidding.  I want to pretend I don’t have a cold. I want to go to the gym, take out the dogs, and carry on business as usual.

In the business world, this happens too.  Little bandaid fixes are lurking everywhere.  The manager now approves all TPS reports.  TPS reports are now approved by the team lead, manager, director, and Senior Director to prevent any and all errors.  TPS reports are now exclusively completed by Tom (Tom is apparently very good at these TPS reports and everything he touches. He never makes an error).

4.It always rears its ugly head.flu-prevention

3 days after I’ve self medicated my problem away I forget my Tylenol Cold for Daytime at home while running off to one of my very important meetings with a very important client.  By 3pm I am wheezing, coughing, stuffy head, and I can’t think anymore.  I tried to make it go away, but the problem was still there lingering behind all the meds.

Despite all those approvals, and Tom’s full time job of spitting out millions of perfect TPS reports, a problem still occurs. Don’t worry, Tom, it wasn’t your fault.  The process was still broken, and all the bandaids in the world couldn’t fix it. As Ruth always says, you put a good person in a bad process and the process wins every time! Click to Tweet!

Note: In the real world Tom wins every time – it is quite annoying.

5. It can set you back by days or weeks!

Once the ugliness of the cold comes back. I admit defeat. I let it take its course. I hole up in bed, give everyone around me sad eyes, post sad Facebook statuses, and am generally a pathetic excuse of my former self. I carry on like I’m on my deathbed.

Once the process breaks again, usually folks step back and start to think of other bandaid fixes to ameliorate the problem.  Or they stop working on EVERYTHING and start having some high level strategic meetings to find out what is really going on.

6. Sometimes you need a professional, even when you really don’t want one.

Usually after publicizing my illness with those self deprecating Facebook statuses, someone demands that I see a doctor.  And I’m so sad at this point that I usually comply.  Sometimes they help and sometimes they say “suck it up buttercup”.

Sometimes those strategic meetings end up with a those dreaded fancy consultants in your office working on fixing your processes.  And depending on how good they are, sometimes they help and sometimes they don’t.

7. It takes patience to really get to the root cause and get it to go away for good.

Sometimes, you need to go and see your family doctor when things still aren’t getting better.  And this takes more time.  And patience.  But hopefully the right diagnosis.

Your consultants (or maybe your in-house process specialists) have done interviews, current state mapping sessions, root cause analysis, future state mapping sessions, final reports – the whole toolkit comes out.  It’s taken time (and money) – but they’ve figured out how to make it work better, faster, and cheaper! And they made it fun too! Oh…they didn’t? I’m sorry.  Call us next time.

8. Hindsight is 20/20.

I really should have gotten the flu shot.

We really should have hired those consultants sooner

9. Sometimes you think you are better, but you still need a bit more time.

Really? Four weeks for a cough is normal? Fine I will be patient and rest.

Another small tweak to this process and we’re good to go!

10. When you are better you can go back to saving the world!

A lovely friend of mine responded to my Facebook statuses with: “Quit trying to be a hero, get better, and then go back to saving the world.”

And once you’ve fixed your dreaded process, and Tom’s ego has recovered from the process beating him (just this one time), you and your business can go back to saving the world.  Or like Ruth and I, making it better, faster, and cheaper.  Tell us about your cold.  I can sympathize way better than most. Or tell us about your processes, we actually have a cure for those. Tweet us @whiteboardcons #betterfastercheaper.

I’m going to bed now. I’m still sick. Pout.

Until next time….

Nicole

Oh for Process Sake!

January 9, 2014Blog, , ,

One of the things that Nicole and I hear a lot is that people don’t like processes that are just put in place for process’ sake.

process4

Well neither do we.

There is nothing less motivating than having to document in gory detail every step of a business process, just because someone says it’s a good idea. Ok, maybe one thing is less motivating, and that’s having someone hand you a process map and tell you to “follow this” when you’ve had no engagement in its development. You feel like you’re handcuffed by more red tape, and you become frustrated.

Process for process’ sake is bureaucratic, restrictive, and demotivating. Click to Tweet.

And, it Gives Good Processes a Bad Name

I admit it, I’m a little sensitive about the barely concealed eye-roll and sympathetic smile that I often see when I tell people what I do for a living.

“A process consultant! Oh! That sounds… interesting.” And then, “isn’t that just a lot of  maps and stuff? I have binders of those in my office and use them every day.” <insert good-natured-but-annoying hardy har hars here>

You can’t really blame the organization. With the rise in popularity of process improvement methodologies like Lean, Six Sigma, ISO, and others, there’s also an increased desire to jump on the band wagon, get certified, and advertise the fact that you are now a high-quality organization.

Well the fact of the matter is that process maps do not a high quality process make. You can map bad processes too! And, you can map good ones poorly. And, worst of all, you can map things that don’t need to be mapped.

Three Ways to Give Your Process Credibility

  1. Give your process a purpose, and let people know what that purpose is. Why are you insisting that people follow a specific process? Make sure there’s a good reason (e.g. audits, financial controls, quality impacts, budgetary impacts, efficiency impacts), otherwise it’s best to let people have control over how they achieve their objectives.
  2. process3Engage people in the development of the process. We love it when we meet with managers who tell us how a process works, and then talk to the people who actually do the work. Usually managers  have no idea what really happens. A great way to increase employee engagement is to ask the process users to be part of the documentation and improvement effort. It will make them feel part of the organization, and even address some of the “what’s in it for me” feeling that is deep inside everyone’s work persona.
  3. Hold people accountable. Launching a process, engaging people, communicating – that’s all very nice. And in six months no one will remember anything about it, unless you hold people accountable for sticking to the  steps. Make it part of your coaching conversations. Model the behaviour you want to see by following processes yourself. Reward people who both stick to them, and consistently strive to make them better.

You don’t have to do process for process’ sake. In fact, we hope you don’t. Help give good processes the recognition they deserve! (And positively transform your organization at the same time.)

Until next time (and Happy New Year, by the way),

Ruth.

Warning: Explicit….7 Steps to Simple Process Mapping Facilitation

December 12, 2013Blog

Ruth and I have been focusing on being more explicit. And if you know me, that doesn’t mean expanding my potty mouth.  I’m quite….colourful in my diction. What I mean is, Ruth and I are working on being more clear. Perhaps saying a little more than we’re used to.   Maybe writing a little more than we’re used to.  Making sure we, and our clients, and our colleagues are all on the same page.

When you spend as much time together as Ruth and I do and also think almost exactly the same way, we know exactly what the other is thinking.  We barely need to say a word to one another.  Usually we finish each others sentences, or chime in to a conversation in stereo with the both of us saying the exact same thing. That’s what makes it so hard sometimes to explain to others exactly what we mean. Since we seem to have a brilliant insight into each others minds –  we barely need to say much to know exactly what we need to do. So what does being explicit actually mean? See below!


Screen Shot 2013-12-12 at 7.29.49 PM

All this talk about being explicit in our training classes, our written mediums (reports to clients), and even our emails had a great connection with process improvement.  We’ll often ask questions of our clients like “What is your customer on-boarding process?”.  Here are a few typical responses…

explicit

“Well, we do this….and then maybe this….and sometimes this….and Barry always does this (but I don’t do it that way)….”

or

“Well, it depends, sometimes its like this, but if this happens I might do it this way….or that way….I’m not really sure”.

When your processes aren’t explicit it means you don’t really have a process, and you are going with the flow and changing things ad-hoc – which is great if you are a new organization that is still getting into its groove. But as soon as you start to mature, things may start to fall through the cracks.

Be Explicit…B-E Explicit. B-E-E-X-P-L-I-C-I-T (clap clap).

By documenting a process and clearly defining the roles, responsibilities, and tasks in a step, you and the team you are functioning with are able to very clearly understand what they need to do, in what order, with what inputs, and producing what outputs – consistently – every time. You start to understand what works and what doesn’t, and be able to improve your process.

So how can you get your organization on board to be more explicit with their processes? Other than calling us in for a consult you mean?  What about facilitating your very own process mapping session to understand what everyone is doing?

7 Easy Steps to Simple Process Mapping Facilitation

  1. Schedule it: Find a date and time where you can get all the people that touch the process to be in a room together to spend 2-3 hours on specifically mapping a process.
  2. Get your Materials: Get some brown craft paper, or flip board paper, post it notes, and markers.
  3. Set the Ground Rules: Let everyone know that this is an open session that will involve lots of voices.  Make sure the room is respectful, allows for open conversation, but also sticks to task – you’re probably on a timeline.
  4. Ask questions: Use open ended and probing questions to help you get the starting point, and subsequent steps.  Remember you are documenting what ACTUALLY happens – not what SHOULD happen ideally.  Think questions like: Where does this process start? What happens next?  Is that what ACTUALLY happens? What does happen? Who takes care of this? Who is ultimately accountable? Where does this go? What do they do with that document?
  5. Just Draw it: Check out our process mapping techniques from our past blog  here.  Identify your swim lanes, use your shapes, number your steps…you get the idea.
  6. Make it neat:  It may look like a sloppy mess with lines everywhere.  Go right to your desk and redraw it neatly, or document it in a software package that either you or your team have access to (Visio is easy, but you can also use others).
  7. Validate it: Send out your new neat copy to everyone at the session, maybe people who were absent, a trusted client or external partner.  Get them to see what might have been missed or captured on paper incorrectly. Have then send you their changes/edits/questions.

Depending on the number of changes and whether they make sense, you may be able to finalize a new document – or you might need an in person session to validate your work.  Either way, you will end up with a current state process map! Hooray.

And now you can be explicit.  *#&*$(&# that was a lot of work!

Now what? Well,  you can look to our past blogs like:

Step Three: Imagine It! In which you brainstorm potential solutions to process issues and draw how they might look.

Step Four: Prove It! In which you build the case for the improved process you want to implement.

But at a minimum, you’ve gained some clarity on  a process, and have a good idea of what’s going on and how to fix some things that have been the pebble in your shoe.

Let us know if you’ve had experience (good or bad!) with process mapping sessions and whether any of the tools above resonate with you. Please use the comment space below or tweet us @whiteboardcons! And don’t forget to send us any general process improvement questions or suggestions for future blogs.

Until next time,

Nicole

Process Improvement via The Whiteboard Way© – Step Five

December 2, 2013Blog, ,

We’re finally at the last of the five steps of The Whiteboard Way© – Talk About It.

idea

“That’s a step?” you ask, “just talking about something?”

Why yes, yes it is.

There is a trick of course – it’s not just talking about what you’ve been doing. It’s communicating the right information, to the right people, using the communication method that they prefer. Or, it’s about effective communication.

Let’s Recap Steps One Through Four

In the last four posts we’ve taken you through all the basic steps for properly defining a problem, imagining

all the potential solutions, and proving that the solution you choose is the right one.

Step One: Define It! In which you describe the problem without assuming a solution.

Step Two: Draw It! In which you visually express the problem in its current state.

Step Three: Imagine It! In which you brainstorm potential solutions and draw how they might look.

Step Four: Prove It! In which you build the case for the solution you want to implement.

Now it’s time to discuss the biggest roadblock to effective process improvement i

nitiatives – effective communication, or the lack thereof.

What Are You Talking About?

You’ve got the best idea in the world. You know it’s going to be big – your boss is going to love it, your colleagues are going to love it – heck, you may even get a raise. You’ve been doing all the steps of The Whiteboard Way©, working away at your desk on your lunch hours and even a couple of evenings at home. You’re super excited, and you finally are ready to let everyone know.

One morning as you and your colleagues are settling in for the day, you tell them all about your plans. A couple smile and say “good for you” and then sit down at their computers and open their eMail. One chuckles and says, “good luck with that”. And another says, “but that will change my work!”

You’re completely deflated. Don’t they see that this is a good thing?

Later that morning you have your weekly one-on-one with your boss and you tell her all about your amazing idea. You pull out your process maps and explain what you’ve been working on.

“How much is this going to cost?” she asks. And before you can answer, “what does the rest of the team think of this plan?”

“Uh, well, I haven’t had time to talk to them about it,” you reply, “and as for cost, I haven’t looked at that. But look how much we’ll save!”

“I’m sorry, but I need to know the cost. You know our budget is tight. And it looks like this process impacts the others – you need to make sure they’re on board.”

And that’s the end of that. What went wrong????

So Many Things.

How to Win the Communication Challenge

There are four key elements to the “Talk About It!” stage of The Whiteboard Way©:

  1. Think about Change Management. You may have read our post about the Change Curve a little while ago. In it, we talked about how people go through a series of emotions (Disbelief, Anger, Exploring and Acceptance) when confronted with a change in their lives. Some go through all those thoughts in a few seconds – they are very resilient people and love change! Others take longer, and you need to consider this when planning on implementing a process improvement change. idea
  2. What’s Your Communication Plan? Who is your audience? Consider people who will be impacted by your idea, or who will be needed to implement or support it.  Now consider the method by which each of those people need to hear your message. Where are they on the change curve? Do they prefer face-to-face meetings or a quick eMail? Not what do you prefer… How do they prefer to communicate. How often? What message do you need to share
    , and what’s the right venue for it?
  3. Be Engaging. No, that doesn’t mean be all charming (although it can’t hurt). It means, engage people early in the process. Ask for their input, suggestions, and ideas. Bring them along your story, and make sure you have all your story elements (including ROI for your boss) figured out!
  4. Remember Your Project Management Essentials. A good project charter ensures everyone understands the scope of what you’re doing, the budget required, the people who will be impacted and who have already been engaged, and of course your key milestones and deliverables. This is one of the most helpful tools you can have, even for a small project! (Project charters don’t have to be pages and pages long.)

Let us know if you’ve had experience (good or bad!) with communication and process improvement projects, and whether any of the tools above resonate with you. Please use the comment space below or tweet us @whiteboardcons! And don’t forget to send us any general process improvement questions or suggestions for future blogs.

Until next time,

Ruth.

Process Improvement via The Whiteboard Way© – Step Four

November 18, 2013Blog, , , ,

Using Return on Investment and Cost Benefit Analysis in Process Improvement

Step Four: Prove It!

prove itAs we continue along our process improvement journey we focus today on PROVE IT!

But first, a little recap.  So far we’ve taken you through the first three steps of The Whiteboard Way© (if you haven’t checked them out yet, here they are):

  1. Define it!
  2. Draw it!
  3. Imagine it!  

We’ve regaled you with:

  • how to remove assumptions and pre-conceived ideas about the solution,
  • to be unbiased and creative in the possible solution,
  • then how to map a process to visually identify opportunities for improvement, and
  • lastly how to imagine a potential solution.

And now the rubber hits the road – we need to do some math to determine if your solution will work! Our first  task to to collect some data!

Collect the Data

We love to plan here at Whiteboard, and while often we want to jump the gun and just start collecting everything we can find, a great start is a data collection plan.  It helps organize data collection activities and makes sure everyone involved with it understands the goals and objectives to provide the best data possible.

Consider asking the following (to yourself ,your project team, and your stakeholders):

prove it 2

  • What data is needed?
  • Who is responsible for getting it? Why is it needed ?
  • How will it be collected?
  • When will it be collected?
  • Where will it be collected?

Cost Benefit Analysis

One of the biggest complaints we hear from teams and their management when we go to implement cost improvement activities are things like:

“We always try to tell management about these ideas, but they just ignore us!”

“Our teams have all these ideas, but they can never tell me why we should spend that much money on them!”

One of the reasons that great ideas often don’t fly is that they are missing rationale.   Everyone can tout the benefits of process improvement initiatives, but its a skill to be able to  articulate why the costs and efforts to implement  are worth it.  A cost/benefit analysis is a structured process for determining the trade-off between implementation costs and anticipated benefits of potential improvements. The analysis is done to ensure that a particular improvement is the most efficient one in a set of potential alternatives.

What is ROI?

roi

 

Return on Investment (ROI) is the difference between the gain from investment and cost of investment divided by the cost of investment. ROI considers hard costs and savings (actual reductions in costs to the organization). The business case to prove your solution should also talk about soft costs and soft savings (other organizational benefits like employee engagement that don’t have dollar values associated with them).

 

 

ROI= (Gain from investment – Cost of investment)/cost of investment

  So remember to consider the following when completing your cost/benefit analysis:

  1. All the costs associated with implementing the improvement
  2. Capital investment
  3. People costs (consultants, staff time)
  4. Training
  5. Lost production
  6. Determine the benefits of a fully-implemented improvement
  7. Calculate Return on Investment
  8. Keep it simple!

You might have come up with the best idea since sliced bread, but unless you talk about it, share it and explain it to others, it won’t happen! Stay tuned for our next blog on Talk About it! – how to communicate your process improvement idea!

Until then, please leave a comment – anything! Process questions, ideas for an upcoming blog, your thoughts on Toronto’s classy mayor…

Nicole

Process Improvement via The Whiteboard Way© – Step Three

November 9, 2013Blog, , , , ,

This week we continue our series on The Whiteboard Way© by taking you through what just might be the “favourite” phase in the process improvement journey – “Imagine It!”

Why is it the favourite phase? Well, it’s because most people have a solution in mind when they start this journey, and up until now we haven’t allowed them to even suggest it. We were all about  problem definition in Step One (remember, no solutions) and then the visual representation by drawing the current state in Step Two. In the third phase, we finally get down to business and talk about some possible ways to fix the problem.

Finally! I Can Just Implement My Idea, Right?

Um, no. Sorry. There are a few things we need to do to make sure that your idea not only will fix the problem, but that it’s also the best place to start. Sometimes great ideas are trumped by new ideas that we find in the first few steps of Step Three. If you can hang in a little longer, what we want to do next is brainstorm all the possible causes for the problem you designed in Step One, and drew in Step Two.

We’ve been looking at three different problem statements in this series:

  •  In the last 3 months we have had to fix this issue 6 times for four customers, causing dissatisfaction for our customers and wasted processing time for our staff.
  •  Each month we are 5-7 days late completing this process, impacting other departments and generating late fees for the company.
  •  This piece of work costs the organization $5,000 per month. Best practices in similar companies is half that amount.

Let’s take a closer look at the first example. It seems that we’ve sent the wrong thing to our customers 3 times in 6 months. Our shipping manager is pretty sure that it’s because we hired 4 new people in the warehouse, and they’re just not using the shipping system properly. He’d like to do some training for them – it will cost $1,500 a person to attend a two day course, and will require hiring temps to backfill while they’re off at training.

In “Imagine It”, the first thing we have to do is think of all the potential reasons for the mis-shipped products. We love to use a tool called a Fishbone Diagram to help people come up with “root causes” for the problem. This diagram is best drawn on a big whiteboard or brown roll-paper on the wall. At the head of the fishbone you put the problem “Mis-shipped products”. Each of the bones in the spine represents a common category of root causes. These categories are designed to trigger thoughts while brainstorming – participants use them to think of all the things in that category that could possibly impact the outcome.

A completed Fishbone Diagram for this issue might look like this.

Screen Shot 2013-11-09 at 6.32.38 PM

Actually, it would probably look much messier and with dozens more ideas. But let’s run with this one.

Our shipping manager’s idea of training being the big concern is right there on the fishbone, under the “People” category. But during the brainstorming session, someone pointed out that there have been a few power outages recently and that all the picking had to be done manually. Also that the website had been updated, and that customers in Vancouver had called in with issues using the online order forms.

Suddenly, the training idea has taken a back burner until the other ideas are investigated. It doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea, or even the wrong idea – it’s just that a little more investigation is needed first.

In this case, it turns out that the power outage was the root cause – each mis-shipment was linked directly to times when the picking process had to be done manually.

Now What?

A few things. First, you might want to investigate why you’re having so many power outages! Is it a freak of nature or do you have electrical issues? Second, how can you improve the manual picking process? Use your new process mapping skills to look at the current process and see where there might be room for improvement and ways to prevent mistakes from happening (the Japanese term for this is Poke Yoke – error proofing).

You might want to prove that the new process will work too. That’s the topic for next week.

Until then, please leave a comment – anything! Process questions, ideas for an upcoming blog, your thoughts on the Maple Leaf’s’ chances this year. Whatever!

Ruth.

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