Looking around at the amazing number of new things that I can witness around me every day, I was once questioning my grandmother about what made the greatest impact on changing her life, among all the new inventions she witnessed through her life from the 1930’s to nowadays. I was expecting an exciting answer such as walking on the moon, or the first supersonic flight, or washing machine and dryer… but guess what she said?.. the one change that she remembered the most for making the greatest impact on her daily life was the ability to get running water from the tap. The smile she had on her face when describing that invention denoted the comfort that she suddenly got, the day she got the ability to wash her hands without even thinking about it!
Since that day, I keep thinking that change around us have two amazing characteristics: (1) the fact that once something really impactful has been invented, it becomes just normal, part of our daily life, be it big or small – people do not think about it anymore; and (2) the fact that change is happening in our modern world at an amazing pace that we can hardly cope with.
Now a few years later, as a process expert, I keep thinking about the impact that running water had on my grandmother’s life as an inspiration to improve the processes I live with every day in the same two ways: (1) keep the change as simple as you can, but make it have an impact so great, that it quickly becomes something that people do not think anymore as a “new” feature, but as something that is naturally part of their lives, and has always been; and (2) make the change happen fast if you want it to stick: indeed, when implementation lasts forever, people lose interest and walk away. These two characteristics come with many great challenges though: how do you make an impact, and at the same time, how do you cope with the pace of change? Well, the answer to these challenges, I realized, always comes back to the basics: Process Excellence !
How does Process Excellence help you to build change in a safe, impactful and robust way, in our fast paced environment? In my opinion, in four ways.
- Coping with the pace at which we get new tools
The immediate reaction that comes to everybody’s mind when speaking about impactful change is new technologies. We think about smartphones, tablets, robots.. all these new tools that build new ways of working around us. Ironically, how are these new tools designed and built?… what is the foundation to build new technologies?… the processes. You need safe and stable processes if you want to implement new technologies. If you miss the process part, you will first of all, build something new, but that people will not use – ie with no impact. And then, once you have built it, you will be unable to produce on large scales, hence unable to sell, and unable to get the new technology to stick because you cannot get the new tool available to the users (ie the buyers) quickly enough.
I would be curious to know how many great ideas did not stick, simply because the inventor had a genius idea, but has been unable to build a process to sell the idea (so that people do understand the impact it can make on them), and a process to produce the new tool (so that it becomes quickly available to people who want it).
We speak about new technologies, we see phenomenal amount of new stuff around us, but the foundation to make these new things impactful and sustainable is our everlasting foundation: Process Excellence.
- Coping with the pace at which we evolve with new mindsets
Then, if you want to be able to implement impactful and sustainable change, you need people to accept the new way of thinking, and to buy into the new way of working. And how do you do that?… guess what: Define the problem or the opportunity, so that people acknowledge the need to change; Measure the current situation, so that people do figure out the gap in measurable ways; Analyze the root causes of the difference between the current and the potential target, so that people know what needs to be changed to make the problem disappear, or make the opportunity arise; Improve or Implement the new way of working, in an impactful way; and Control its sustainability, to ensure it quickly becomes the way, and it sticks. Buy-in naturally comes if you allow people to go through the steps, one by one.
Stick to the methodology, and people will follow. Forget it, and you will lose people on the way. Once again, the foundation required for people to accept and change their mindset is our old chap: Process Excellence.
- Coping with the pace at which we use new methodologies
We are also surrounded by a number of people who come up with new models, constantly, inventing the new way of working: Agile, Design Thinking, RPA… all these methodologies reflect either a new name for Process Excellence, or build a slightly new approach that always relies on the same foundation – a robust change process.
And if you look at it in depth, all the new methodologies that we see surrounding us always start with the same foundation: the intention to change the process, the way people operate. And they also have the same two key objectives: build impactful change, in a sustainable manner. Our two recurring patterns in the world of Process Excellence.
- Coping with the pace at which we work with new people, in new organizations
Once an organization has redesigned its processes and cannot improve further with significant benefits, it will work on re-organizing itself to continue operating in a constantly more efficient manner: new organizational structure, offshoring, outsourcing, building robots… whatever the model is chosen, the sustainable models are, once again, the ones built on the strong foundations: value chains. Once an organization loses the view of the value chain, it starts drowning by spending money on what is not important to its customers. On the contrary, the organizations who keep a strong focus on what it produces for its customers – products or services – become agile, and constantly adapt to the ever-changing environment. Agility and adaptability does not necessarily come from the size of the organization, but from its ability to keep the focus on the value chains, and ensure all its processes deliver value for their customers. In other words, those and only those who are built on Process Excellence foundations survive!
Once again, even when speaking about people, impactful and sustainable innovation come from Process Excellence.
All in all, in order to be able to cope with the pace of change and build impactful and sustainable change, success always relies on the same pillar: Process Excellence. DMAIC is the foundation that always sticks, whether you call it that way or by another name. Once you get that right, change is safe, impactful, fast, and sticks. If you miss that component, it means you are building walls on moving grounds, because you are trying to create a need that does not fit (that happens all the time if you miss your Define phase), or because you do not understand what you are trying to change (that happens all the time if you forget to measure your baseline), because you are trying to change what works well instead of what does not work well (that happens all the time if you fail your root causes analysis). However, the paradox today is that most organizations think that DMAIC is old-fashioned and that they should train their people on new methodologies instead. So because of their intention to “accelerate change”, they skip the foundations, they lose the expertise, and they try to build the roof first… how long can it last, in your opinion, before senior leaders in any organization who drop the Process Excellence foundations, start to realize they are going to drown once they have run out of Process experts?
The Process Excellence String of Ariadne 