Process Mapping
If you can't describe what you are doing as a process, you don't know what you're doing.
W. Edwards Deming
Variation is the enemy and you can fight an enemy better when you can see. That is a perfect statement to understand the purpose of process mapping. The whole idea is to systematically show how each process in your organization interacts with all of the other processes.
Consider a typical organization constructed of various business units each with a leader/manager beating the drum to provide the best service they can within their scope of the business. Each of the leaders/managers typically do a good job, however in many cases the process hand-off activities between groups is often not entirely considered and allow potential variation and waste into the organization. Even the highest performing business units will reach a state of diminishing returns if the lower performing units are not brought up to speed with the higher performing ones. All the more reason that a tool is needed to improve integration and communication within an organization. Process mapping is just the tool for the job.
W. Edwards Deming
The effort to put one of these together is seemingly easy from an aerial view, but can be wrought with inconsistencies, vagueness and lofty ideals, which may lead to change management issues. The proper way is to capture the current state with all of its issues, even if they are not currently obvious they will be as the tool gets to fruition.
Some of the common problems include:
- The understanding of how a process actually works is often unknown or exists in the minds of only a few.
- Management does not always know how a process actually works or is improperly perceive through the management hierarchy.
- Processes often vary by the leaders. For example a team of Project Engineers who each run their projects in their own way; often a source of variation.
- Ad-hoc process are common in smaller organizations and/or new organizations.
- People will sometimes give you information on how they think the process should work rather than the way it actually works. One of the reasons why a walk through the process is a requirement for validation; similar to an ISO audit.
- On many occasions, the process may not be consistent from day to day.
- Consensus reaching may be required when the process is not well defined.
The more recent economic conditions have forced reductions in the workforce, which has led many companies into a form of mass confusion among the workforce. I call that denominator thinking, it will certainly improve the bottom line but is very short lived. I have observed that well run process fall apart as stakeholders are let go and confusion emerges, which leads to the development of wasteful activities. The loss of talent is sometimes unrecoverable, at least in the short term; one reason a known and understood organizational process map is needed. Numerator thinking is a much better approach, but takes a learning organization focused on continuous improvement to succeed. After all most organizations are like a huge bank where profits can increase as the waste is remove from the system.
