Process for the People have been churning out weekly articles since May, to help and inspire folks through their process improvement journeys. We’ve hit on important points like business analysis, culture improvement and some essentials of communication. But if you take a look at our current articles list, you’ll notice something strange:
Where are all the process methodologies???
I mean how can we call ourselves a process improvement blog if we don’t have articles like “Lean for the Ultimate Diet” or “Six Sigma: The Sequel to Five Sigma.” What about Voice of the Customer, Kaizen or even the forever popular Agile (emphasis on the big ‘A’).
And yea, I know what you are thinking! Just to squash some doubts ahead of time, we are most definitely trained in these methodologies and use many aspects of them in our own process improvement efforts. So then was this intentional or did we just have a regular mind blank after starting to write each week?
I will try to answer this question today, go through some thoughts on why we haven’t gotten around to the obvious and why that isn’t such a bad thing anyway.
This Wasn’t Planned
Thomas and I initially set out to create snippets of actionable and engaging content. Content that would help the typical corporate innovator succeed in a world that doesn’t always understand how to drive true improvement. This content would be rooted in our own personal experiences and learnings, and therefore offer a unique perspective that wouldn’t be easily found elsewhere.
We did not however, decide on how that content would specifically take shape. Instead, we took an agile (little ‘a’) approach to see what we enjoyed writing about and decide on themes later. And we certainly did not exclude any topics. So the fact that methodologies are mere footnotes in our site is a particularly interesting outcome.
To restate the obvious, we are not social media influencers and are certainly not following some master plan to get the most viewership possible. Our content is our organic effort to write about things we think would be the most helpful for our target audience.
Methodologies Aren’t Helpful?
Process methodologies are of course very powerful and are often the key elements to major process transformation. They bring structure and repeatability to continuous improvement efforts. And they provide valuable career tracks for keen individuals.
- BPM helps organize your process into a standard visual for all to understand
- Lean is great for identifying bottlenecks and waste your customer doesn’t care about
- Six Sigma provides a framework for using process data to reduce errors
- Voice of the Customer helps define key external requirements and relate them to quality
- Agile breaks down development cycles to deliver value and learnings in increments
- Insert many many more
I look at a list like this and see a set of tools to use in my various projects. I need to select the right one to deliver the right result each time. But therein lies the issue. Just like holding off on selecting a solution to a problem we haven’t defined, we don’t want folks to select a methodology without understanding the reasoning behind an improvement (for example, always jumping to a process model).
And its these principles, which come BEFORE a methodology is selected, that I think we have instinctively focused on these past few months.
Some Thoughts on Why
So like analyzing a dream, I will now attempt to explain why our blog has ended up in this unique position: A methodology-less process improvement blog.
We are prioritizing personal experience
As mentioned, we wanted our blogs to be informative in a unique way. We focus on personal experiences and learnings that don’t necessarily fit into specific methodologies. Our topics tend to be more focused on “the why” and the soft skills of improvement.
There’s so much content already elsewhere
If you are interested in this space, you most likely have found hundreds of blogs specializing in each of these methods. Why cover topics that are so numerous elsewhere? We find it difficult to find the types of topics we focus on, and therefore are excited to provide them for others interested in the same.
It’s the way we work
We aren’t strict methodology practitioners. We like to use elements of different methodologies to drive better results. And we would never force-fit a certain methodology just because its what we have been trained on. Our blogs reflect that flexibility and focus on results rather than methods.
This is a Good Thing
Thomas and I have found success in this way of working, so its ultimately very positive that our blog embodies these behaviors as well. And we can always focus on elements of process methodologies in the future as we continue on in our own careers.
For now, just remember that there are important questions to answer before a methodology is chosen. Questions like:
- What type of issues need to be resolved? (Lean vs Six Sigma vs etc)
- How quickly are results required? (Kaizen vs DMAIC)
- Do we have a measurable goal? (Goal-Setting)
- Who cares about these improvements (Stakeholder mgmt, VOC)
- Do we know what is happening now? (BPM)
Happy Improving (and reading our blog)!