Boxes and Arrows
It is one of the greatest quality management tools…
And you all know how to do it. You all know how to draw up a process map or create a flow chart. It’s easy, you write the activity in the box and then link it to the next box with an arrow. Simple.
And if you can’t manage it by yourself don’t worry… there are 100’s of IT tools to help you do it.
- Microsoft Visio
- PowerPoint
- Casewise
- ProVision
- Aris Express
There is even a web site that tells you which tool is the best, — though it is a little hardcore for me.
Personally I am a bit old school, you can’t beat a pad of Post It notes and a felt tip pen, though I’m told doing it this way isn’t digital, and therefore, by definition, I am an old git.
But all that process mapping misses the point
99% of the effort drawing up a process map goes into the boxes. But the boxes aren’t the problem. We know what we are doing in the boxes. Things rarely go wrong in the boxes.
The arrows between them though… they will kill you.
The arrows are the problem, they are where:
- The handoffs are
- Nobody knows what is happening
- Nobody cares what is happening
- The power plays play out
- Hands are washed of all responsibility
- The finger of blame gets pointed
Look after the arrows, and the boxes will look after themselves
Think about the feedback loops and interactions. Worry about the connections and white spaces.
Don’t manage inside the box, think outside it — groan, I’m so sorry about that.
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Read another opinion
Image by Neil Cummings
Hello James,
I find myself to be in total agreement with you on both points. The connections are usually not well connected, they misfire,they ‘miscommunicate’, they garble stuff up, the ignore stuff….. And of course this is usually forgotten especially as dealing with it requires dealing with the difficult stuff – usually political stuff as well.
Your point about technology particularly resonates me. Every technology has a price. The more sophisticated the technology the higher the price that is demanded and has to be paid. What am I pointing at? The more sophisticated the technology:
The more it will take to learn it and use it well;
The more time you will end up spending with the technology or others who are fluent in using the technology;
The less time you will spend with the people who can actually help you get an insight into what is and is not going on;
The less insight these people have on your understanding as they cannot easily see that which you are creating with your sophisticated digital technology.
Here is Mazism 3: the simpler the technology the more it recedes into the background and serves as a tool to the purpose it is being used for; the more sophisticated the technology the higher the probability that you will end up serving the technology, the technology becomes master you become slave.
I wish you well
maz
I like it, what are Mazism 1 and 2?
I’m lacking something. Artistic talent, maybe.
I recently mapped out the reporting that our Workforce team does. They create a number of reports for managers, supervisors, and individual customer service agents. They also maintain the schedule and forecast workload. We are in the process of getting software and tools to simplify their jobs. However, they currently generate their data from 9 unique sources, produce 15 various reports, and move information along 46 different arrows in order to produce two final documents each week (the schedule and scorecard).
I mapped this mess out as part of the process for identifying what we wanted our workforce software to do, and to identify what was necessary and what could be dropped and simplified. I ended up with a mass of tangled arrows pointing every which way. Even though I was accurate, and you can trace the flows of information and work rather easily, the final product just didn’t help anyone visualize the whole.
The only solution I could find to simplify it was to cut it up into several different maps (four, in the end). Now the individual maps are understandable, but I’m afraid that they still don’t help me understand the whole.
What really scares me is that I was just looking at the work being done by 7 guys. I wish I (or someone like me) had been around when all this had been getting aggregated in the first place. Unfortunately I feel like we’re in a place where the only improvement possible is to throw it all out and start over.
The arrows got me lost.
Perry, I guess you are right, the best thing to do is start over. Particularly if you work in an organisation of 700…
Thanks very much for your comment
James
James,
If the problems lie mostly in the connections and getting people to communicate what is happening and to take responsibility for the hand-off and what happens next then wouldn’t it be better to include that in the ‘box’ and shorten the ‘arrow’?
Or, would that create another box?
Adrian
Don’t go messing with my flow charts Adrian
James,
Great point. Much of the experience happens between and outside of those boxes, including those things that are outside of the company’s control. Let’s say I want to go get coffee – the drive to the coffee shop, the search for a parking spot, etc. are all part of the process/experience. The coffee shop may not have control of those things, but they can mitigate their impact by how they address those things when the customer walks in the door.
Annette :-)