When undertaking a process improvement exercise or implementing a new one, one should always keep the bigger picture in mind. And to ensure this, its best to have two teams in place working in a driver-navigator combination, advises Subhash Khare

Imagine driving on a city road at a moderate speed, and suddenly a car zooms past you. The car overtakes you, but moments later you catch up with the same car at the next red signal. You wonder, what was the need for the driver to drive so fast, when in all probability there was a red signal waiting for him. The higher the speed, more the wastage of energy when the brakes are applied.

A similar situation could occur with organisations trying to improve the quality of systems and processes. While teams focus on specific processes, they often ignore the inefficiencies in downstream processes, which nullify any improvements made. A simple example could be a team in a factory focusing on increasing production. Even as the factory achieves higher levels of production, they may discover that the single-minded, sharp focus on the problem at hand has resulted in other related areas being ignored. Increased production may not translate into profits if the sales department has not geared up for the additional volumes they need to sell.

In another case, a team working hard to improve responsiveness to customers was disappointed to see their efforts go to waste. The reason was simple: customers who were used to the old levels of service had mentally prepared themselves for certain cycle times. As a result they were not ready in terms of resources, to avail the service faster. Imagine, while staying at a hotel you order breakfast before going for a bath, assuming a 30 minute response time. And the room service of the hotel serves piping hot omelettes in 10 minutes, while you are still in the bathroom.

The trick is to have a bigger picture, extending far beyond the defined domains. For any process targeted for improvement the various downstream processes that could hamper the utilisation of the improvement must be examined well in advance. For every process improvement area, there should be two distinct strategies, one on how to improve the process, and the other on how to ensure that the benefits of the improvement reaches end-customers. This would require that the company thinks several steps ahead—in terms of what can go wrong or what factors can hamper the utilisation of the improvement achieved.

If the team is resourceful enough, members on the team can share and allocate roles based on their personal traits and skills. A member in the team could play devil’s advocate and explore Murphy’s law and think about the various aspects that could go wrong. This could be both in terms of attaining improvement, as well as in ensuring that improvements reach end-customers so that they can avail the benefits that accrue. In this manner the organisation realises the benefits of the improvement.

Many times, the people who are best suited to work on the process improvement for a given process may not be the best people to work on the second part, to ensure the benefits are not lost. Often, the teams working on individual projects may not have the vision, knowledge or bandwidth to map the future steps—the way a chess player would think several moves ahead. Here business leaders should step in to give the required ‘broad vision’ as well as ‘long distance vision’ to the teams.

Sometimes it is the driver-navigator combination that may work the best. While one set of people work on process improvement, another set of people with different skills and experience, focus on looking at the roadmap and loopholes, if any.

The desired improvement not reaching the end-customer could be one problem of the piece-meal focus. Another problem could be that the improvement achieved in one process could actually affect other processes negatively through various ‘side effects.’ This can happen due to the several cross linkages among various processes. It is similar to the speeding car splashing water on pedestrians on a rainy day. The common element here is the same road, which both share. Similarly, various processes sharing a ‘common road’ can affect each other. People working on process improvement projects must protect other processes from the side effects of their improved process, and also protect their own processes from getting adversely affected from other processes. Just as a careful car driver not only avoids splashing water on others, but also tries to protect himself from other speeding vehicles.

Stable processes over a period of time achieve a sort of ecological balance with each other. Improving any processes necessarily means changing it. While this change is necessary, it can cause a disturbance in the ecological balance, which has a good chance of being overlooked. Individual process owners often are not able to see this balance. The disturbance is detected only when it has already caused a problem. The first step in the direction of addressing this is to break the myth that problem solving requires a focused view. Just as while driving, your hands control the steering wheel, but your eyes are always on the road—and not on the steering wheel. Similarly, while working on any process improvement project, your eyes must be on the road, which may be shared by other processes.

The objective is to get the desired improvement in the process, ensure it reaches end-customers, without adversely affecting other processes. A focused view on one process can cause these unwanted situations. The key is to have an overall view or the bigger picture of the whole set of processes. This may also require several improvement projects or processes to be looked at together rather than individually, and a combined effect of all can be evaluated. Unless the complete picture is sketched, it may result in a piping hot omelette awaiting a guest who is still in the shower waiting for housekeeping to deliver towels!

Subhash Khare is the general manager, quality, at Wipro Infotech and can be contacted at s.khare@wipro.co.in