What we ‘think’ happens does not equal what ‘actually’ happens.
I often receive requests from companies to process map department activities after a major restructuring to understand why things are not going as planned. Companies are making changes without understanding where they are today in relationship to those changes.
As a result, the drafted, theoretical change looks great on paper but once implemented causes lots of headaches for employees trying to figure out their roles and responsibilities and customers who aren’t receiving the quality services or products they expect. Why? Because in the hype of trying to move quickly with change, one very important element was missing…where are we today and how do we currently run our business?
The missing link is that senior executives are not digging deep enough in the ways of working of the organization and are making decisions on what they think is going on…does this sound familiar? Everyone wants the quick fix on how to ‘make things better’ without doing the work necessary to understand the current state of the company or the department that will undergo the change. The work that’s missing…value stream map and process mapping:
- Value stream mapping (VSM) is a high level look at ways of working from input of the customer order to the customer receiving the product or service and everything (and I mean everything) in between.
- Process Mapping is taking a section or area from the VSM and doing a deeper dive and outlining each and every step/action for that area.
Why is this important? What we ‘think’ happens does not equal what ‘actually’ happens. By mapping out where you are today, you can take your vision or idea and actually see what will be impacted and put a theoretical plan together that will actually have a positive impact because you understand what will be impacted. So, if you’ve ever been part of a change that seemed like someone shot darts through a To Do list to determine what will be done, without VSM and process mapping the current ways of working , that’s exactly what they did.
Be efficient about change and do it well…once!