Do you have a department, service or team where something just isn’t quite clicking? Seen an increase in complaints or a drop in performance? How do you get to the bottom of a problem area?
We’re often asked to conduct reviews of service areas in trouble, whether it’s to tackle performance, culture, or support in ways to find savings. A core part of this work for us is good old fashioned process mapping!
Process mapping has been around for years, and there’s good reason. Over time, processes can develop and evolve, for better and for worse, and taking the time to conduct a factual, visual review of how work flows through a team is always worthwhile. If you want to conduct a process review, here are our top three tips:
A common mistake made by people conducting process maps is to focus too much internally. Processes are ultimately serving a customer (be it a resident, an internal customer, or a partner) and it’s crucial that you capture their perspective throughout. This is why we always pair process mapping with customer journey mapping. This helps to keep your eyes on the prize of what makes a difference to the outcome of the customer. You can do this by creating a supporting customer journey map, or by sampling customer cases and testing your process map to see where the contact points were with them. Joining these two tools adds huge value and stops you designing processes great for your team/organisation, but problematic for those you serve.
It’s all too easy when process mapping to map out the ‘ideal’ process, but in reality this may not be the case. This is why we advocate fact checking your process map by comparing it with a sample of cases, complaints, and work flow/performance data. Remember Pareto’s Principal – that 80% of the work may come from 20% of the cases. Understanding how and why there is deviation from the process will help you to strengthen it, and give you a sense of scale and numbers.
At Trueman Change we are huge advocates of involving others. Don’t produce your process map in isolation. Take the opportunity to workshop with those involved – whether team members, partners or other stakeholders. This serves two purposes. Firstly it helps to get it right – those working in the field and following the process are most likely to know where the bumps and issues are. Secondly it’s helps to create a sense of shared ownership and supports the change management should you change the process. Involving others impacts the team and helps to strengthen a learning and innovative culture, and who doesn’t want that!
In conclusion, we are big fans of process mapping, especially in cases where you’re unsure what the issue is and why a team or service isn’t performing as well as it could. As long as you follow our tips above to stay grounded in the customer, performance and ensure you involve others you won’t go far wrong!
For more information about our trouble shooting service join our change chat on 6th December 2023 at 13.00pm.
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/change-chat-troubleshooting-tickets-706499668527?aff=oddtdtcreator
