The Holidays are officially here!
Whether it’s Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanzaa, none of the above or all of the above, we wish you a truly wonderful, warm and peaceful holiday season, and hope that 2015 finds you happy and prosperous.
Ho Ho Ho!
Nicole & Ruth
Did you miss us? Ruth and I were saying that this is probably the longest we haven’t blogged. Don’t worry, we are back and in full force now!
In today’s blog I wanted to share some highlights of our 2-day course, “Leading Process Change,” which we delivered on November 5 & 6. We had a a great diverse group of participants, from the Ontario Government, Telus, Blackberry, and two web development firms, just to name a few. It was a total blast. We shared our experiences in change and leadership and learned basic process improvement skills too.
On day 1 we whizzed through the Whiteboard Way. It was a lot of material to cover, and using a business case, we helped our team of participants to:
1. Define It – Define a specific problem in an organization, without assumptions, without solutions, and using specific data to isolate the issue.
2. Draw It – Use basic process mapping techniques to visually represent a process clearly.
3. Analyze It – Look for opportunities to improve (like bottlenecks, duplication, and roles & responsibility conflicts).
4. Imagine It – Imagine a future state using brainstorming techniques.
5. Prove It – Use data to ensure that the new process performs better than the original process.
6. Sell It – Use excellent communications and stakeholder engagement skills to ensure that the process change is communicated effectively.
On day 2 we covered a wide range of leadership topics to help participants learn how to guide a change – from embedding process improvement within strategic plans, to using emotional intelligence to increase people’s buy-in, and even how public relations plays a role (care of our excellent guest speakers)! And as well we covered basic communication, relationship building, and change management skills too!
We were really pleased to get some great feedback from participants:
“Love it. I will definitely bring the knowledge back.”
“Great back and forth engagement.”
“Great idea to combine change (of any kind!) with leadership —> practical tools & advice in simple, accessible language. Love it.”
Now it’s on to new and exciting projects to come….what do you want to learn next?
Let us know on Twitter @whiteboardcons!
*Special thanks to our awesome photographer Sara Beasley @Sarabeesphotography, www.sarabeesphotography.com
Until Next Time,
Nicole
Picture a business networking dinner, wherein each participant gives an overview of their business, including target market, main products/services, and current concerns. You’ve been listening to some of the dozen or so professionals give concise overviews, and are taking notes – keenly interested in connecting with one or two (using Nicole’s Networking Advice), and thinking you might have some good feedback for a few others. Then it’s your turn, and you stand and give the “elevator pitch” you’ve honed to a thing of beauty. And… people look at you like you have two heads.
That has happened to both Nicole and me in recent weeks, and we were quite taken off guard! We thought we had worked hard to describe what we do (business process improvement) in a way that is easy to “get.” And we have, for the most part – just not in the elevator pitch (2-3 sentences) format that is crucial in networking events and casual conversation.
Clearly it’s something we need to work on.
One of the things that is so interesting to us, and has been since we started this business, is the varying degree of understanding (or lack thereof) of what “business process improvement” is. Being a process geek myself, I assume everyone is constantly thinking how they would improve things, and therefore inherently “gets” what business process improvement is. Not so!
Let’s start by defining a couple of terms:
A process can be defined as a series of actions or steps that are undertaken in order to achieve a particular outcome. Some common examples that may resonate with you – think of the steps that are involved in each:
When we say “business” process, we are referring to processes that happen every day at work in order to achieve a specific outcome. Do these sound familiar?
Each of these (and dozens of others) happens every single day in most businesses, and if you’re lucky, they are smooth and efficient and wonderful and everything goes well all of the time and all your employees and customers are happy with them.
No? Well then.
If one of your business processes is somewhat less than perfect and causes you grief, if you go home on Friday night and think, “if only we didn’t have to do THAT thing,” if you get feedback from your customers that they are sick of having to do the same thing over and over with the same (unsatisfactory) results – well then my friend, you have a business process problem that needs improving.
Or, if you have an outcome or metric that is not performing as well as it should be, most likely there is a broken business process in there somewhere, and you need to figure out which one it is, uncover it, and fix it without adversely affecting any of the other processes that it impacts.
There are many ways to approach business process improvement – ours is one that focuses on engagement and leadership skills as a means of making improvements “stick.” It’s different than other more rigid methodologies, yet it uses elements from several of the most popular, including Six Sigma, Lean, Appreciative Inquiry, and Methods Time Measurement. We like to be professional and fun at the same time, and show people what business process improvement is, how it works, and how it can make their organizations better, faster, and cheaper.
Got it? Excellent. Now we just need to get that into an elevator pitch. Any suggestions? Tell us in the comments below!
Until next time,
Ruth.
Linda Hills is a seasoned Learning & Organizational Development practitioner whose mission is to help leaders, teams and organizations create emotionally intelligent transformational change. Over the past 20 years, she has designed, developed and delivered learning and organizational development interventions while working in software, financial services and the not-for-profit sector. Linda has a Master’s degree in Adult Learning and is a certified Emotional Intelligence, and Vital Signs Assessor with Six Seconds, a certified Change Practitioner through Connor Partners CIBC program, and is also certified as a Strengths Deployment Inventory (SDI) Facilitator/Coach. She is currently an Executive Director in the not-for profit sector, leading her organization through an emotionally intelligent transformational change.
Linda will be offering The Six Seconds Emotional Intelligence Assessment (SEI™) at our upcoming course, Leading Process Change, in Toronto Nov 5 & 6. Find out more about that and about Linda HERE.
Linda over to you:
I’m with Linda North on this one: Process isn’t my favourite thing. But there are two other words in the title of Ruth and Nicole’s upcoming course (Leading Process Change) that strike a chord with me: leading and change. Why? Because both of these concepts are deeply rooted in human emotion, and helping people build emotional intelligence is my “raison d’etre”.
We first heard the term “emotional intelligence” in 1995, when Daniel Goleman wrote his groundbreaking book of the same name. Since then, much has been written, many versions of it have come along, and yet it remains largely conceptual, if not absent, in most organizations. Emotions are still seen as soft and disruptive, and are unwelcome in a professional environment.
And yet therein lies a critical misunderstanding about emotions. In a work setting the word conjures up images of someone losing their temper and yelling at colleagues, or storming out of a meeting. These are perfect examples of emotions that have not been managed, and that fuel the aversion to them. So in the business world, we prefer to “leave emotions out of it”.
This couldn’t be more wrong! Emotions are assets. They give us information and energy1. Not to mention they are automatic and pretty hard to hide2 (even when you think you are doing so masterfully, that twitching eyebrow gives you away :). Think about fear for a moment. It is seen as a negative emotion, but what is it telling you? If you guessed that it’s telling you that so
mething could go wrong, you’d be right. And how might that be a good thing? It can protect you from dangerous situations.
So what is emotional intelligence? The model I use was developed by Six Seconds, so named after the amount of time it takes for the chemical reaction in our brains to settle down after we react to something. The model comprises eight competencies that allow us to use thinking AND feeling to make optimal decisions. These eight competencies are divided into three main categories:
These are easier said than done! It takes reflection and effort to build these competencies, but they can all be learned!
If you aren’t sold on emotional intelligence, consider this:
And if that isn’t enough, take a look at the bottom line stats: when leaders practice emotional intelligence the impact on outcomes is clear; it is predictive of6:
With the last Gallup Engagement survey (2013) showing that 63% of employees worldwide are not engaged, and 24% actively disengaged7, it’s time for leaders to up their game. And that means developing EQ to (at a minimum!) match their IQ.
Looking forward to seeing you on November 6th!
Linda
References
1At the Heart of Leadership: How to Get Results with Emotional Intelligence, Joshua Freedman, Six Seconds, San Mateo, California, 2007
2Vital Organization Field Guide, Joshua Freedman and Massimiliano Ghini, September 2014
3 HBR “Breakthrough Ideas for Tomorrow’s Business Agenda,” April 2003
4 Times of India, “Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella tells students, fall in love with what you do,” October 1, 2014
5 The Vital Organization Field Guide, Joshua Freedman and Massimiliano Ghini, September 2014
6At the Heart of Leadership: How to Get Results with Emotional Intelligence, Joshua Freedman, Six Seconds, San Mateo, California, 2007.
7 http://www.gallup.com/poll/165269/worldwide-employees-engaged-work.aspx, retrieved October 22, 2014.
Linda North 
is the founder of North Public Relations. Starting her career at Hill + Knowlton Strategies, she worked with Motorola Canada to launch their Twitter and Tumblr presence. Later at Venture Communications she learned from leading brand strategists and creatives, big ideas went from from conception to execution. After discovering her true passion for entrepreneurial companies, she moved in-house to the forefront of the connected home revolution, ecobee – makers of the world’s first smart thermostat. NorthPR strives for creative and new ideas, embracing new media, challenging the status quo and achieving outstanding results. One of her international clients at already the top of the map, outperforming all other countries in media coverage results – and that was in the second month working with them.
Linda will be speaking at our upcoming course, “Leading Process Change” in Toronto on Nov 5 & 6. Find out more about that and about Linda HERE.
Linda over to you:
I’ll be honest, I hate process. I’m not good at it, and I have ‘no’ time for it. Case in point, I currently have 5,757 emails in my in
box.
I could be the perfect archetype as the person who needs to go through process improvement training. But then I think, oh no, I’d have to sit through 2 days and just feel guilty because I actually won’t change my ways. But I wish I could because I’d serve my clients, colleagues and ve
ndors a lot better.
Here’s the thing. Once you’ve gone through all the trouble of improving your processes – spending hours researching, finding and collaborating with right experts, and getting to the hard work of implementing process change – you deserve to yell about it from the rooftops. Your stakeholders need to know what you’ve done to improve your relationship with them.
Communicating and PR’ing your process improvements may be the last thing that comes to mind when you’re putting together your full process improvement plan, but it’s a very important step to consider. The reasons you’re going through these changes are so you can serve someone or something better.
While writing this blog post, I did a quick Google News search and came across these two articles:
Peace Corps improves application process
Evolving consent processes improve patient satisfaction
Both of these stories are sharing news about a significant change within an organization to makes things more efficient and better for their stakeholders.
But most importantly, make sure you get your story and angle right.
No one cares about the intimate details about how you improved your process (well, process geeks Nicole and Ruth do, but they aren’t your typical people). Your story isn’t going to be about YOU, it needs to be about THEM.
Better yet, did your process improvement really, truly innovate your company culture, programs, products, etc.? If so, you may be able to go beyond your niche and become a true thought leader in the space of innovation and leadership. Don’t undermine the massive improvements you are creating within your company.
The world needs more people like you who are willing to embrace change to create a more efficient and productive world. So start sharing your story!
Linda
Leyla Razeghi is a consultant for Business Strategy and Optimization, with expertise in business modelling, strategic planning, tools for a customer centric business, metrics and process efficiency. She has helped more than 50 brands and business work on their strategy and grow.
Leyla will be speaking at our upcoming course, “Leading Process Change” in Toronto on Nov 5 & 6. Find out more about that and about Leyla HERE.
Leyla, over to you:
As a solutions provider for small and medium size businesses, I always make sure my clients understand the importance of setting up the right strategies in their business; without clear goals and tactics, you might be able to subsist, but you won’t go far. (Click to Tweet) You need to prepare to face your competition and make sure your customers will prefer you and recommend you.
I started my business to help small and medium sized businesses be more competitive and grow, and I believe that the biggest obstacle they have is that they don’t focus on their strategy – a lot of them make decisions “on the go” and don’t think of the future. In addition, I have encountered many businesses that invest in branding and marketing but don’t really work on business modelling and strategic planning. Some think that planning is something that they can do in the future, while some simply avoid it because it sounds overwhelming.
Setting up an executable business strategy is of vital importance for entrepreneurs and managers, since a strategy is a plan for success! It answers the questions “where do you want to go?” and “how will you get there?”
First, strategy requires clarity, and starts with setting up a mission statement and a vision statement, both of which should be based on a “why” and a “purpose”. (Why am I doing this? The answer to this question explains your motivation and your reasoning behind the company or business.)
Second, you also need the right engagement from all key stakeholders. Engaging people early in the process (perhaps even as a first step!) will ensure that:
Third, you need the tactics, actions, and timelines that will deliver on your mission and vision.
If you don’t have a defined business strategy, I encourage you to get on it -now! It is your path to success – it needs to be customized to your business and environment, and it must not stay on paper. Great leaders ensure its flawless execution, which is, of course, an entirely different subject!
Good luck, and I hope to see you on Nov 5 & 6 at Whiteboard’s course!
Leyla
Our regular readers will know by now that Nicole and I are upbeat, positive people and we get excited about a lot of things. So, when I tell you that we are SUPER EXCITED about our upcoming course in November, please trust that it is not hyperbole.
Well, because we believe this course is innovative, and innovation is a good, positive, wonderful thing.
You’ve heard us talk about The Whiteboard Way© before (click here or here). We believe that our method of Process Improvement is what organizations need in order to take the first step into a Process Improvement culture. Often organizations hear about the buzz words – continuous improvement, process improvement, Six Sigma, Lean Six Sigma, TQM, etc – and they go bananas implementing a new program.
And so many of them fail. I’ve seen it happen in three major organizations in both the private and the public sectors.
They fail because they haven’t set themselves up to succeed – they have not considered the importance of change management, culture shift, and stakeholder engagement. It’s as bad as if someone all of a sudden decided they want to be a farmer, and so they bought a big field and started sticking seeds in the ground, without tilling the soil, removing rocks, adding fertilizer, and ensuring the earth is rich and ready to receive the seeds.
Enough of the analogy. You get what I’m saying, and hopefully many of you are nodding your heads and saying, “yup – been there, done that.”
Our new course, Leading Process Change, offered Nov 5 & 6 in Toronto, examines the intersection of Process Improvement and Leadership Principles and enables the learner to influence change and develop a process-based culture. Everyone can benefit from this course, especially if they are responsible for, or thinking about, process improvement in their organization. (Click to Tweet)
You need to come to this course. Yes, you.
respectfully, PFFT.Whether you are an employee on a team in an organization who wishes you knew how to influence change so people would listen to your ideas, or a VP trying to figure out why you can’t make process improvements stick, (or somewhere in between), this course is for you.
We have designed the course in two modules, so that people can come to one or both.
More information is here in this link. I encourage you to read it, and then sign up and bring anyone else who needs to be there (which is everyone, so…). We have discounts for Earlybirds (before October 18th), former students, members of BNI or Verity, and employees of the OPS. And discounts can be combined!
I hope to see you at our course. I promise it will be fun – our past students have rated our training consistently in the top box! (Oh, and the lunch will be fantastic!)
Ruth.
PS – if you have any questions, just shoot us an email at info@whiteboardconsulting.ca/staging.
We do quite a bit of networking for business here at Whiteboard. It can be alot of fun, and it can be draining and frustrating. Networking is a great way to build your business. An even more profound way to look at it is to imagine the people you meet as your sales team! Instead of trying to sell YOUR product or service to everyone that you meet, what about learning about ways that the both of you can act as referral partners for one another?
It is painful to see how poorly networking can go if not done properly. Someone is selling you something you aren’t interested in, AGAIN! How do you find the RIGHT people to network with, and most importantly how do you break the ice with that person? (Any APP developers out there? I have a genius networking app I’ve been dreaming about…..)
Ruth and I consider Whiteboard to be that sweet spot between process improvement and leadership. The same self-discovery coaching principle we teach to leaders and managers applies to networking. Good ice breakers help build the right connection, without you “selling” to them before you’ve built a relationship. Networking is like coaching. Get your network partner to self-realize that you are someone they should do business with.
So often we get so excited about our business that we just go wild. Use these first two phrases to learn and discover more about the person you are talking to. One of our WORST networking experiences is 3 days after we’d just gotten a new website, we met with a website developer who started an hour-long networking session telling us about how we should re-do our website. Let’s just say Ruth had her director face on. She was not happy. Or last week, when the divorce attorney asked us both within 30 seconds if either of us were married. Yuck.
Tell me about/ Tell me more about:your business, your clients, how you got started, your business partner, your employees, your personal life.
What ever YOUR angle is, get people to start talking! Pick a specific “nugget” and get them to tell you more. Actively listen for more nuggets so you can ask more questions.
Use this information to tell a SHORT brief story about how something in step 1, happened to you. Don’t go on-and-on. And despite your brain DYING to tell this person how your business, idea, product will be perfect for them, take some time to go to step 3.
I’ve had a similar experience. Can I share a similar story with you?
You are building a RELATIONSHIP. Not a buyer and seller interaction – but a real relationship with this person!
What are open ended questions? Any question that does not yield a yes or no answer.
Take your nuggets and get them to ask you more.
This is also a great time to set the stage for a followup conversation (especially when you are at a networking event and want to speak to more people):
No, I didn’t. You don’t get to pitch your business. GASP. In fact, I’d like you to wait until they ask you the open ended questions about you and your business. Remember that people learn coaching techniques and networking techniques by observing others. Be their role model.
And even when I am talking about our business, I’m still asking more questions that they may be a little more self interested in, like: Tell me about process improvements that you have worked on? Tell me about how it worked? Tell me about the types of training that your company offers/delivers/has done in the past? How did it go?
And because we are like that, I made you a quick little Networking Planning Checklist so you can prepare for your next event. Good luck!
Networking horror stories? Did these tips help? Let us know @whiteboardcons #Networking.
Stay tuned as we feature the speakers in our Leading Process Change Course for the next few weeks. Learn more about the special expertise they bring to the table!
Until Next Time,
Nicole
Nicole and I have stumbled into a bit of a theme these days, talking about the basic activities involved in Process Improvement and sharing with you some user-friendly and simple templates. First, we wrote about how to actually map a process, and next we covered how to look at that process map and assess which steps are a waste of effort – i.e., they add no value. Both those blog posts include handy templates which you can edit and manipulate to suit your needs.
So now what?
In Nicole’s example, we learned that External Failures were taking 56% of the total time involved in completing a process. Since External Failures are clearly non-value-add steps, that is where we will focus. It may seem obvious, but often it’s over-looked so I’ll say it again: start your process improvement work on the steps that offer the most efficiency opportunities.
The next step then, is to look closely at the External Failures and think about what might be some root causes for them. By reducing or eliminating them, not only will we reduce the chance of upsetting a customer, but we will reduce the amount of time it takes to complete the overall time to do the process.
Root cause. The main thing that is causing a process to fail. Here’s an example: a customer’s dessert arrives and it is burnt. What might the root cause be for that? There may be a few of them, so let’s brainstorm. The customer received the burnt cake because:
There are a few examples of why the cake might be burnt. Are they root causes? Nope. They are sub-causes. Let’s dig deeper:
So are those root causes? Maybe. Let’s take a look:
We’re getting closer. We have a few root causes in there now, and a couple of others might even be able to go further. A great way to do brainstorming like this is to think in terms of categories of what could possibly go wrong. You can use whatever categories will work for you or your business, but some common ones include:
A tool we love to use originated in Japan in the ’60s. Known by several names (Ishikawa diagram, Cause-and-Effect diagram, and Herringbone diagram, to name a few), we use the most common title – the Fishbone Diagram. This diagram is nothing more than a brainstorming tool that helps groups think about potential root causes of a problem or issue. Lucky for you, click on this Fishbone Template for you to use in your next brainstorming session. It will download automatically.
Here are the steps in using it:
Now you have a big list of ideas, and the trick is to figure out which one of those is the most impactful. How do you know which one(s) to fix first? Well, Nicole will tell you that next week… so stay tuned!
Until next week,
Ruth
PS – details on our new course, Leading Process Change, are coming within the next few days. Stay tuned to our Twitter (@whiteboardcons) and Facebook feeds, not to mention our website.
A few weeks back Ruth blogged about how to do a basic process map (click here to check it out) and it included a free process template for you to use as well. You’re welcome. Process mapping is a huge part of our business. We know process mapping creates engagement and buy-in for process change (when done in a workshop setting) , is a great visual tool, and can improve effectiveness and efficiency.
Ruth talked about the key steps in documenting a process; the steps include:
AND, I can’t believe Ruth forgot this. I am going to gloat since she is a stickler for this one.
9. NUMBER your steps (post-production comment from Ruth – I am mortified! I can NOT BELIEVE I forgot that… and is such a public way! I will never live it down. Sigh.)
We received a lot of really good feedback on this blog, and people loved the template. The big question was:
Great question. The next 2 steps are to validate your process map and look at value added steps.
Validation
So if you’ve done your process map in a workshop style setting, you likely had many of the stakeholders (the swimlanes) of the process in the room. So validation in this case is finalizing that process map and sending it back out to those participants to see if what you’ve documented is accurate.
If you’ve worked on a process map by yourself, validation becomes even more important. You are verifying that all the steps are accurate and represented properly. In fact, this is an opportune time to re-group and re-engage to validate the map, or engage for the first time. A few things to keep in mind:
Now for the meaty stuff….
Next we are going to analyze the process! First let’s determine whether a step adds value or not? Ask these 3 questions:
Here you can identify the type of non-value added activities. Non-value added activities include:
How do you do this? Well by filling out the super easy Process Summary Analysis Template of course!
Step 1: Put in the number of process Steps
Step 2: Enter the amount of time it takes to complete this step in minutes (don’t know exactly? Time it a few times or guesstimate for now), sum that row in minutes, and its % is 100% because we are summing the whole process.
Step 3: Identify which process steps are value added and not value added. Sum the number of minutes for all the boxes that you’ve identified (in this case we have an x in step 1 and step 6 at 1 minute and 5 minutes respectively, so we have 6 minutes of value added work and 75 minutes of non-value added work).
Step 4: For those steps that are not-value added, identify what the type of non-value added activity it is.
Step 5: Assess the percentages, and start working on the biggest first. In this case 56% of the non-value added steps are due to External Failures.
That should keep you all busy for a little while!
Ruthie…I guess this means you have to give our readers some Cause-Effect Diagram templates next week. You’re welcome. 🙂
Also stay tuned for more info about our new “Leading Process Change” Course! Over the next few weeks you’ll see guest blogs from our speakers, more info on the course, and more templates I think!
What do you think of this template? Did you use it? Was it helpful? Let us know at info@whiteboardconsulting.ca/staging or Tweet us at @whiteboardcons! More questions for us? Use #DearRuthandNicole!
Until Next Time,
Nicole
