At some point in my life, I used to come face-to-face with diagrams like this every day:
As a chemical engineer, the first word you think about when faced with a process flow diagram is “balance”. You’ll want to do a mass balance, an energy balance…etc.
It’s how you’re trained.
Recently, I was in a conversation where I found myself thinking about how business processes are not really different from chemical processes (thus the term ‘process’). You decide your input, your output and then build systems in the middle to get you from the input to the output.
It’s not rocket science.
But while mass balances and energy balances rule the day when it comes to chemical processes, business processes are quite interesting. I’ve seen corporations where the processes were so rigid, they were suffocating.
When you ask someone why the process is designed the way it is, they have no idea.
And they probably don’t care.
They don’t understand that fundamentally, processes are designed to streamline operations – and make employees replaceable. Such companies believe a good process with mediocre workers is better than a bad process with exceptional workers.
Understanding why a certain process exists the way it does is important because it helps people recognize “exceptional cases,” where it would make more sense to deviate from the process than actually follow through with it. History is filled with business cases which were handled with emotional intelligence and some finesse that then developed a positive image for the company because it was understood that this company was run by humans, not robots.
A personal favorite is that of Zappos when a customer meant to return some shoes but her mom passed away and she didn’t have the time so Zappos arranged to have UPS pick up the shoes and sent her flowers.
But that’s another subtlety that rigid processes do not accommodate: the significance of emotional intelligence. The systems will all be in place to maximize productivity, revenues, etc..but how people actually implement these systems is another story.
Being a leader means inspiring your people to do their best and not scaring them into submission. Because even if people do get things done out of fear, creativity has a tendency to cast itself out the window (I’ve written on this last year).
In conclusion, with the AI revolution taking over at some point, people will need to return to their human traits to stay relevant. What do you think?
I think processes are not meant to replace employees, but create time, out of thin air. Creating time will help with revenues, reduce costs, reduce human error and dependence on people, yes. Ultimately, however, if time and automation-for-survival is the North Star, a company that values humans creates time for them to, if not anything else, chill more and have more time to read comics! We’re all fighting against (and sacrificing our happiness) for T.I.M.E.