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Technology will only improve your productivity if there are solid foundations. If you are considering workflow management software; implementing it around a poor process will create admin and headaches. But how do you build strong foundations and implement technology successfully?
Let me introduce you to Paul, Paul is a manager at an online business. He was frustrated that his staff took months to build new websites. Websites were the businesses’ bread and butter. Leadership were pushing for growth and the long site build lead times were hindering their ambitions. More websites equalled more business. Like most business leaders, Paul needed productivity to improve; every delay in building a new site was costing revenue.
Does this story sound familiar? Are you dealing with inefficient and unproductive processes, too?
A global OnePoll study of over 5000 employees, revealed 26% of an employee’s day was wasted due to poor productivity. Opus Energy found that 86% of SMEs admitted to productivity problems. As a country, according to the ONS, we are 16% less productive than our G7 counterparts. So how do we do something about it?
Technology or tools can’t solve problems by themselves, unfortunately.
Productivity tools and solutions should enable people to do their work better, faster, more efficiently. If staff aren’t operating effectively to begin with, spending money on tools won’t get you anywhere.
Paul had tried to improve productivity by embedding software and I’m not surprised that it didn’t work. It added admin rather than making anything more efficient, he needed to improve workflow efficiency first.
Adding technology to flawed workflows will simply amplify the flaws.
Technology is there to support or facilitate effective strategy or problem solutions; people are always going to need to figure those out by themselves. Good news for those who fear that robots will someday take over. Bad news for those of us, like Paul, who are time pressured and wish the answers were that simple. The latter groups sounds very familiar to most of us.
“Technology doesn’t solve humanity’s problems. It was always naive to think so. Technology is an enabler, but humanity has to deal with humanity’s problems.”
Sunder Pichai, Google CEO
Has your business tried to use technology and failed? Were you trying to use technology as a plaster rather than healing the wound? What’s the root problem you need to fix first?
Paul’s story has a happy ending.
He was finally successful with the software implementation and integration into his team. He achieved his website build time target, pleased his leadership team, and built a better team to boot.
Here is how he did it and how you can too.
For a successful implementation you need to:
Successful workflows improve productivity at work. They help teams accomplish goals faster and more effectively and produce more reliable and consistent outcomes. Winning workflows must also be adaptive to changes in internal or external factors.
To improve workflow, it is easiest to lay out what is currently happening, step by step, marking up any decision points and dependencies. Give yourself a baseline to work from. I like using a whiteboard to scribble and rub out as it unfolds. But if you prefer making it neat, free apps such as draw.io are easy to use.
Next scrutinise each step asking yourself the following questions to help design a better flow.
Sequence
Would a different order work better? Can any steps be done side by side? Would a different order mean some steps would take less time?
Duplication
Is anything happening more than once? Are different departments repeating the same work? Could steps be broken into smaller steps, so they are not repeated?
Bottlenecks
Can you prevent the need for sign off by putting fail safes in place? Is there part of the process with a lower capacity that is slowing the whole process down? Do you have a gatekeeper?
Automation
Could anything be automated? Or at least semi-automated?
Poor workflow process can be the result of siloed work teams either not understanding the work done by others or where department lines are blurry and team members are not sure. Reviewing the process across the team and challenging the mantra ‘that’s the way we have always done it’ by asking ‘why’ will give you a good understanding of where there are opportunities for improvement.
For the lead generation company, each team was independently going through all their steps before handing to the next. The design team, for example, took copy and images from the creative team and built the entire website. They laid out their draft design, made tweaks, built it, and handed it on. And inevitably got it back to start the process again. Team by team the model was draft-tweak-build-repeat.
Building and then rebuilding and rebuilding clearly wasted time and effort. Rather than building a series of final drafts, teams needed to communicate changes as they happened and make quick wire frame versions for feedback from the other groups.
Each team could draft and tweak concurrently; ensuring the build step only happened once. Their tick list mentality, ‘completing’ their part in one sitting, needed to change. The original brief needed to be regarded as an outline rather than a final brief as there were so many moving pieces.
We brainstormed workflow improvement ideas and challenged ourselves to honestly answer the above questions. We landed on a workflow model and recognised the communication model that would need to work along-side it.
An effective workflow plan isn’t the same as running effective workflow. To increase productivity and implement the new flow, we needed to build the right behaviours.
What behaviours do you need for your workflow to be successful? Are there any roadblocks you need to avoid?
For the website builders, communication was critical, so much changed as they went along the process and each team’s decisions could have an impact on all the others. We set up a simple spreadsheet listing each of the tasks, so the team could assess progress. Paul ran a short meeting, 3 times a week, to discuss changes.
I am sure you are familiar with the challenge of changing mindsets and staff actions. It’s hard. This zero-cost short term plan was designed for Paul and his team to perfect the process and adjust the behaviours.
It was reasonably admin heavy, collecting the information ahead of the meetings took Paul a bit of time but behaviours were changing. Staff were asking each other where they were up to with each of their pieces and communicating about changes.
Taking the change piece by piece rather than jumping to the technology let staff adjust comfortably to the new environment.
If you are sure that technology will enable your plans, is there a stepping-stone you can put in place to get your staff to come along with you?
Using technology to improve efficiency in the workplace can ultimately be very effective, but you need to give people time to move their minds.
Choosing the right platform was easy, Paul knew exactly the spec they needed. Technology was welcomed with open arms. We’d solved the workflow problems, increased work efficiency, improved employee, and team productivity; and now they were ready for technology to enable the process.
‘I don’t need to ‘wait’ until the meeting I can ask questions as I go and inform other teams of updates’. ‘If the client changes their mind about something, we all know as soon as sales does’. Staff were delighted. The weekly meetings reduced to once a week and became more about discussing upcoming work than current work.
Putting in place the right workflow, as Paul did, not only makes the technology fit decision easy it makes implementation easy too. The workflow exercise and testing your plan will reveal what aspects of the various platform options you need and which you don’t. Forcing technology to fit in, rather than using it as an enabler is a recipe for a bumpy ride.
Paul finally did realise the promises made by the workflow technologies ‘make decisions with confidence’, ‘collaborate across teams’; ‘keep projects on track’; ‘help teams do their best work’, albeit not as a direct result of the technology itself.
Unpicking the root of the problem, exploring methods to improve productivity, allowing staff to use stepping-stones, and then enabling the solutions with tools will ensure successful technology integration.
If you jump to step 4 and try and implement without adjusting its more likely to push you backwards than forwards.
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