The tyranny of process and the missing people dimension
Disentangling and simplifying business processes is hard but rewarding work. But it begs a question.
The other week I set out how I am resolving some basic cash handling and compliance issues at a small cash based business. By cash I mean there’s no credit sales for a big chunk of the business. There’s also good old fashioned folding stuff going into a till.
Yesterday we did a soft go live for a revised process that simplifies the manner in which physical cash is handled and how that cash is managed as part of broader compliance and reporting needs.
I say ‘soft’ because there are additional elements related to how card sales are managed across the POS and accounting app which have been implemented and only partially tested. It will be another week or so before we see how it all meshes and whether the automations I envisage works as intended.
The good news is that everyone involved understands the ‘new’ process and is happy that the process serves to keep them safe. They’re even happier that what I did was familiar to them as it represents practices they’ve used in the past.
We walked through and tested how the process for managing cash purchases, cash balancing and reconciling back to physical counts should work. This is all bread and butter stuff for any business of this kind but it struck me how cumbersome and broken the previous process had become AND the impact it had on staff morale. It doesn’t help that management has largely been AWOL. In part this is due to the rolling effect of the COVID pandemic but also because leadership doesn’t manage well in crises. To be clear, these are common problems.
In that context, my job is as much about handholding and encouraging the staff tasked with doing ‘stuff’ as it is to fix broken shit.
So when I hear folk talk about business process, the benefits of process mining and the current imperative to fix pain points, I wonder how much emphasis is placed on the human aspects?
For example (and I’m picking on this to illustrate a point rather than score a point), my old buddy Jon Reed recently took up the subject of reviving the role of the business process expert. It got plenty of play on LinkedIn with kudos for revisiting a topic in which both of us were intensely interested some 7-10 years ago but which had faded from view.
Jon’s story veered towards the technical - as it should given the focus of his story - with success anecdotes taking centre stage. But the story paid scant attention to the human aspects. In my view this is an oft forgotten aspect but one which has a direct impact on good (or bad) outcomes. Only one person mentioned the human imperative in the LinkedIn comments.
As I was thinking about this I remembered the many occasions in the past when I’ve been engaged to help fix finance problems. Looking back, there was always a highly significant human element that often took more time to fix than the technical process fix. The technical term often used is ‘change management.’ I prefer the term, ‘shovelling shitty stuff out the door.’
First up was the necessity of running process therapy sessions designed to acknowledge the hard work ‘Betty In The Corner’ has done over many years, plugging gaps while management sat idly by. Lesson learned? Never, ever ignore the stalwarts who battle in day to day process combat. Lose them and your process crumbles almost immediately as the institutional knowledge in Betty’s head walks out the door.
Next comes empowering Betty to teach the new process and help me course correct or adjust for any assumptions that turn out to be stupid or likely unworkable.
Third, and before full handover, we jointly walk through how the process operates in current and potentially future state to ensure everyone is on board. Equally important are explanations of the ‘why’ even when that seems blindingly obvious.
There’s a good amount of hand holding and negotiation involved in the detail behind these steps but it’s all worth the effort.
In yesterday’s case, roughly 80% of the time jointly spent with the operational and finance teams was about listening to their needs, understanding the practical considerations and making tweaks. Here are some mundane yet critical examples that are easy to overlook:
Where do cash spent receipts go on a daily basis?
Do those receipts need numbering?
Who has the safe keys?
What if someone goes sick or on holiday?
Who does the excess cash banking?
I deliberately avoided technical conversations about the interplay with the systems because the people involved need assurance that the automations in place actually work and can be demonstrated. Beyond that, there’s not much they need to know.
Finally, I took the time to document everything we agreed onto a Workplace Finance Working Group page as a permanent record for all involved, including those with board level responsibility. My documentation isn’t exhaustive but enough for everyone to know what needs to happen on a daily and periodic basis.
During this exercise, I made an effort to keep the detailed instructions to a single page, written in operational terms and not accounting jargon while using words with which everyone is familiar. A good example is to rephrase the Daily Sales Summary as the Z Reading, a commonly understood POS term.
As the meeting closed out, the teams agreed the need to keep things simple and only to make future changes (i.e. add complexity) if there was a really good reason to do so. We will see how well that works for the future.
In all this I’m cognisant of the fact that HR almost always wants a piece of the action and especially when it involves a change in roles or task responsibility.
I believe that as the process implementation leader, it’s my job to not only ensure that those with new or adjusted responsibilities are satisfied with the changes but are content that the changes do not impact their ability to do other work without some sort of compensation.
If I’ve done my fix job correctly, life should be easier, leading to cost savings, process improvement and/or freed up time to do more rewarding work. After all, who loves admin? Almost no-one I know and certainly not those trying to operate a business.
If there’s a shift in responsibility that requires additional work - which can happen - then I need to make sure that compensation is made. That’s a battle for me and HR, not for the people doing the work.
As I left the building I made one last point to everyone: this isn’t perfect but you can see how it works and we agree it’s simple to follow. If anything goes wrong or you’re stuck, don’t panic. I’ll be back soon and will fix whatever we’ve missed or whatever drops out of the woodwork. It’s on me not you. That got a few wry smiles. I’ll take that.
So - what do you think? Do you agree with me that the process expert/leader needs to take responsibility for the human topics mentioned above? If not then how should these human topics be managed in the context of process improvement/fix/change? Is this approach practical beyond relatively simple situations? How would you break down a complex process to effectively manage these situations? I’m interested to hear your thoughts.