Hi improvers! Today we’ve got one of my all-time favorite posts from Bill, a deep-cut from our archives. Enjoy!
I was reminded of a particular challenge this week that many of us deal with in our line of work:
How to explain what we do to people unfamiliar with process improvement and innovation
This week I’d like to share some quick thoughts on why it’s difficult and how I try to manage this. Hopefully this helps you enjoy a day job full of process improvement without dreading the next family get-together.
An Example
I’ve been doing this full time for the better part of a decade. Even still, I sometimes struggle to quickly and effectively describe all the different things I do at work. A conversation with a new acquaintance may go like this:
New Friend: So what do you do Bill?
Me (first attempt): Thanks for asking! I work as a process improvement manager in financial services.
New Friend: Oh so you’re a day trader?
Me (2nd attempt): No but I may help day traders achieve their goals through a mix of operational and technological improvements.
New Friend: Oh got it, so you’re in IT?
Me (getting desperate): Well a lot of it ends up as technology solutions but I’m really involved in the analysis and design of processes that help solve business problems.
New Friend: *blank stare*
Me (buzz word approach): I’m like an internal consultant supporting innovation and digital transformation.
New Friend: Oh uh so you do the sticky note thing?
Me (giving up): I’m a project manager.
Sound familiar? I’ve had a lot of versions of this over the years as buzz words come and go, and especially as I change industries. Oh and btw, my conversations with Grandma are the same, just with less back and forth, and more blank stares.
What’s So Confusing?
From my perspective, there are a few root causes to why this happens. Firstly, our industry is constantly inundated with buzz words. Everyone from a marketing manager to a construction field worker can do some sort of innovation. And words like digital transformation have been so watered down and broadened that they don’t provide helpful details anymore. Therefore, when we use words like process design that have a specific meaning to us, our audience is most likely familiar with other, less-accurate definitions.
Secondly, our industry’s “tangible” aspects are not widely known outside of our own practitioners. People don’t see BPMs and functional models on TV or posted on the street. No one struggles to explain more physical industries like automobiles and healthcare. But we are left to navigate a world where people only recognize our work through walls covered in colorful sticky notes.
And finally, what we do is so broad! We help teams or individuals in any industry achieve their goals. Just writing that makes me sounds like I am some sort of self-help guru or physical trainer. And as a result, the high level description of what we do (achieve goals) leads to misunderstanding and the granular level description (BPMs and models) leads to blank stares.
My Suggestion
As much as I’d love everyone to learn about our practices, I don’t want to be that guy showing everyone pictures of his baby whenever a remotely related topic is mentioned (just to clarify – I definitely do not have pictures of processes in my wallet).
So after resigning to a world that isn’t universally passionate about process, we must be very deliberate in the first 30 seconds of our job intro. I would suggest hitting on these points to provide maximum clarity and minimum blank stares.
- “I help teams improve on their businesses by analyzing what issues they might have and how they might solve them.
- What I do is important because teams often fix issues that don’t actually help the business or build solutions that don’t fix those issues.
- An example of an issue is XX (ie the process is taking too long and clients are complaining).
- I use XX process tools (Lean / BPM / etc) to help generate requirements that can then be used in building a solution that actually solves the problem.
- An example of a recent solution we facilitated was XX (ie change in process or technology build).”
As a disclaimer, this is of course not the only approach. But it is what I’ve settled into over the years as it tends to cause the least barrier to entry. Another approach I take in an extended conversation is to mock analyze a business issue that your “new friend” might have in her job. It’s a great way to connect on a more detailed level, and expose that person to a field they may actually want to pursue in the future.
Final Thoughts
Thomas and I would love to hear about your own experiences describing your process improvement role. Try posting your examples below, and let’s see if we can crowd-source an even better approach for describing our amazing jobs!
Happy job describing!