Blog Archives

Whiteboard versus software

08 Mar 2018 - Craig J Willis - Blog, Business Performance, Examples - Leave a Comment

This is a question that comes up from time to time when introducing Skore to new teams, “is it better to run workshops using whiteboards or software tools?” I’d argue that it’s not a question of one versus the other, they each have their strengths, the question should really be “when should I use a whiteboard and when should I rely on technology?”

What is a workshop?

A workshop is a very powerful collaboration and innovation tool. It normally involves a group of stakeholders with different areas of experience and expertise. It takes place in an open space where the team have room to move around and interact. It is typically facilitated by someone that helps guide the team toward reaching a desired outcome.

Workshops are used to understand problems, identify solutions and allow the key stakeholders to provide their input. The purpose of the whiteboard, or a software tool, is to help visualise the ideas under discussion and to explore them in more detail.

So how do I know what to use?

I’ve found that it depends on the stage the team is at in terms of their understanding of the issues. In the early stages of a project there’s a lot to figure out and everyone has a different point of view. This is the blank page phase where you have to get thoughts aligned. Using a whiteboard here is perfect. Thoughts are very unstructured and the freeform nature of a whiteboard allows the team to get all these thoughts visible. Once you have achieved this you will start to see relationships between the ideas and it’s this point where things start to become more concrete. (see Dan Roam’s Back of the Napkin for guidance on how to visualise ideas)

This phase is where I would start to look at using a software tool. You’re starting to dig into the details, and the devil is often in the detail. At this stage the expertise of the participants really comes to the fore and conversations can be very quick and passionate. It’s important to keep these energy levels and concentration high to be most effective. The problem with manual driven workshops is that ideas come thick and fast, they get clarified and changed very quickly. It’s difficult to keep up with the flow and stopping and waiting for the facilitator to update a sticky note can sometimes be enough to distract the participants.

By the same token the software tool itself needs to be visual and quick, this is not always the case. Whether wireframing, or producing flows, a quick and easy tool is required to get the best out of the workshop. And if you can get the content directly into the tool then there’s no need to follow up later putting the content into the tool based on some poor photo you took with your tablet.

Having said all that, when I’m using a tool projected on to the wall I always have a whiteboard or flipchart available to capture additional ideas.

The bottom line is that workshops are incredibly powerful ways to collaborate and engage with different stakeholders but it’s important to use the right tool at the right time so that you can get the most value from the experience. As a rule of thumb I’d start with the whiteboard in a very early stage, as soon as ideas start to firm up and the nature of the challenge is understood then it’s probably time to switch to a laptop and projector.

Check out our free guide to process mapping

We’ve designed Skore with this very much in mind. We’ve used many tools over the years, some are better than others in a live workshop environment, but they mostly rely on experienced users to get the most out of them. We wanted to create something that anyone could pickup and use to capture flows and user journeys with very little practice.

Skore versus MS Visio, Lucidchart and Gliffy

13 Feb 2018 - Craig J Willis - Blog, Business Performance, Product - Leave a Comment

For the purposes of this article we will consider Lucidchart, MS Visio and Gliffy to be general purpose diagramming tools. Given its ubiquity we will refer mainly to MS Visio for the examples.

How is Skore different to Visio?

This is the most common question we come across when introducing Skore to new audiences, especially analysts and consultant. We use Visio to create flowcharts and we create flowcharts in Skore so how are they really that different?

It would be easy, but rather boring, to try and explain the difference feature by feature.

Instead I would describe Skore as a strategic tool that helps organisations better understand themselves and therefore better able to improve and change. Whereas Visio is very much a tactical general purpose diagramming tool. I can design a business process flowchart in Visio, and I can design my new kitchen.

Process – a strategic view

For decades business leaders have considered their organisation’s processes as strategic assets. Processes flow through organisations, transforming inputs from suppliers into value for customers. They are the reason businesses function. And yet, after all this time, executives continue to struggle with problems of efficiency, standardisation, quality, risk and effectiveness.

When taking a process view of an organisation it’s easy to see where the problems are. Bottlenecks and breakdowns happen most often where the process moves from one team to another, from one department from another, or from one person to another.

Inefficiencies and errors thrive where different people deliver the same piece of work in different ways. Or design new work every time they do the same thing.

As an organisational improvement tool process flowcharts are used to show us, and help us fix, these problems.

So why do these problems keep coming back? Why do so many leaders still consider process and process efficiencies as a strategic priority? Why have we not solved this once and for all

Process – a tactical view

At a recent client the chief executive complained that he couldn’t understand why people still kept making the same mistakes despite his efforts to make the whole organisation more process focused. This reflects the fact that in most organisations ‘business’ processes are confused with flowcharts.

Flowcharts are fantastic tools for visualising flows of activities or data. They say a picture paints a thousand words and a flowchart allows you to layout complex sequences of activities that may be sequential or parallel or both. Something a text document does very poorly.

So can you draw a ‘business’ process using a flowchart? Absolutely, however it’s not so easy to create true business processes, at least not as easy as it is to draw any old boxes and lines. Something many people confuse with business processes.

In practice flowcharts are created for many reasons, as very low level task instructions, decision trees, or for implementing specific parts of a system. When created in Visio they are flat 2 dimensional diagrams with the only guidelines and rules based on the experience of the user.

Or they are created on whiteboards, they are large, complex and with varying levels of detail all displayed in one noodle soup of a flowchart.

The problem with thinking of process as a strategic asset

The problem is that processes exist at many levels of an organisation. There are the big strategic chunks of work that describe the core value chain. Or there are the management routines required to ensure work is optimised and continuously improved.

There are the key activities that describe what the organisation, team or department needs to do. And there is the implementation level of work such as tasks or requirements for systems.

These different levels of process are still often drawn in Visio but they require considerable expertise, skill and experience to create and manage them. In fact, in most cases, the same expertise is needed just to explain them and how they fit together.

This expertise takes years to develop and individuals that fit this bill are rare and sought after. They are most likely to be interim roles or expensive consultants. Organisations bring them in for specific projects and programmes.

This type of skill rarely gets embedded into an organisation and once the consultants leave their ability to update and maintain a true process view of the organisation goes with them. The organisation gradually reverts back to type.

A further problem, and one that any good process consultant will be perfectly aware of, is that processes do no exist in isolation. A process doesn’t work without people to do it, nor does it work without the inputs and resources that are to be transformed. Again, without the systems, rules, machines and equipment that make it work, a process is nothing but an idea.

To really understand an organisation’s strategic processes it is essential to have a good understanding of how all these interlocking pieces form the complete picture. Our experienced consultants have created a myriad of tools to assist them but it generally boils down to flowcharts and spreadsheets.

Spreadsheet upon spreadsheet of data all related to specific parts of our process. Creating this monster requires a PhD in astrophysics and an army of analysts to create and keep in synch. No one understands how it hangs together expect the original artist that created it. And although they can answer any question using this resource, it appears as a clouded crystal ball to virtually everyone else

How Skore solves this issue

What we’ve just described is a status quo that has existed for many years. Visio, Lucidchart and similar tools have simply created an electronic version of brown paper and string, or it’s more modern equivalent, whiteboards and sticky notes.

It doesn’t bring a fundamental change in thinking. It doesn’t address the issue of getting an organisation to recognise, articulate and love it’s processes in an ongoing and strategic fashion.

Skore is different first in its approach and secondly how that is applied in the tool. Skore is designed to make it easy for more people in an organisation to learn how to capture and describe processes.

And when I use the term ‘process’ I mean multi-level flowcharts that include all the other things an organisation needs to function. Not just the work activities, nor even the people, but all the systems and other information required.

All this information is stored in a single model, not multiple flowcharts and multiple spreadsheets that need to be kept in synch manually, but a dynamic model that includes all the information linked together.

This is also not some technical architectural tool. Skore follows some very simple rules that makes it very easy to understand and use. It’s not for everyone and while everyone can create boxes and lines in Visio, a significantly larger portion of your organisation will be able to develop good quality processes in Skore.

A model in Skore can start at the top of the organisation showing our strategic buckets of work and, clicking a button, you can zoom into any level of detail you wish.

It becomes a true strategic view of an organisation’s processes where the CEO is looking at the same model as everyone else.

Get In Touch

How to increase performance across your multi-site business

20 Oct 2017 - Craig J Willis - Blog, Case Study - Leave a Comment

Dan Leyland from How2 Change explains how to improve performance across your multi-site business — Guest post by leading change practitioner Dan Leyland from How2 Change

This article has been republished from LinkedIn.com with the kind permission of the author.

The challenge of a multi-site business

Are you a leader within a multi-site business? If so, are you 100% happy with the performance of all of your sites?

If not, would you be interested in a tried and tested solution that raises performance across sites and closes the gap between the best and worst performers?

Back in 2008, a well known FTSE 100 business had just this problem. In some of its branches, customer experience was great, so too were the financials. In others, it was a very different story. For the leaders in this business the situation wasn’t acceptable and so they chose to act. Doing so drove their sales up by 9% within 6 months.

More recently, a smaller business with 50 sites saw half a dozen standout performers and wanted to raise the bar for the others. In this case it was worth an estimated 50% uplift in their profitability.

We have worked with, and improved, many similar business, but these two are interesting because of how different they are. They two are poles apart in size and operate in different sectors, yet both had similar challenges and obtained great results using the exact same approach.

How was it done?

One of the most powerful, and simplest, models of change we use is the Logical Levels of Change. For anyone familiar with Neuro-Linguistic Programming, or NLP (a form of applied psychology for change and communication), you may have come across this before.

The Logical Levels Model is made up of inter-connecting modules, all of which have a bearing on how people think, feel, act and the results they produce. For an organisation, when colleagues and customers behave in a certain way consistently, you get results.

Whether they’re the results you want is a different matter. That’s where the power comes. If you’re not getting the results you want, do something different. Simple idea, but how does this work in practice and how do you drive the behaviours which produce your desired results?

Do something different

The first Logical Level is the Environment. In an organisation, this will include factors like the people we work with, the way we work (processes), the systems we use, the way that we are organised, and so on.

Having the right environment enables success, but doesn’t in itself determine success. Often, Change Programmes are scoped only to look at change to the environment such as a new system or a new process. As one of the big 4 consultancies says:

NEW SYSTEM + OLD ORGANISATION = EXPENSIVE OLD ORGANISATION!

For anyone looking at process work, take a look at either Skore or Nimbus. These products are designed to make it easier to do the right things in the right way. Rather than baffling everyone, other than the process authors, with a myriad of notations, shapes and colours.

The Logical Levels then move through behaviours, capabilities / skills, beliefs, values, identity, mission, and purpose. This may seem familiar even if you haven’t known these by the name Logical Levels. This is because many organisations display and communicate their vision, purpose, aims and values in the same way.

In the context of change, understanding each of these components is invaluable. The real value comes from understanding how they are similar between individuals, teams and sites where you get the results you want ….. and how they differ between the sites where the results are not hitting your targets.

What are the differences that make the difference?

For one of the above clients, they’d looked at paying more to attract and retain people and drive results. One of the differences that made the difference was to understand what motivated their people …. and money turned out not to be too high up on the priority list. Another was the skills that people needed, which is where processes and a management development programme came in, and both were modelled based on the top performers – why reinvent the wheel if you can simply copy and paste what works?

Over a number of years, understanding the differences that make the difference, and turning that knowledge to action has produced some unreasonable results.

So I return to my original question: If you are a leader within an organisation where there are multiple teams or sites doing broadly the same work, and their results vary, would you be interested in a tried and tested solution which produces breakthrough results?

If you’d like to know more and learn how you can make a difference across your multi-site business then get in contact:

Email: dan.leyland@how2-change.com

Phone: +44 (0) 07895 027 484

Process mapping versus documentation

09 May 2017 - Craig J Willis - Blog, Business Performance - Leave a Comment

What is Process Mapping?

Early on in my career as a consultant I remember explaining my new role to my Brother. “Process Mapping?” he replied, “I’ve had that done to me!”

He worked in the finance industry and told me that someone in the compliance team had called him. “We’ll be mapping your processes over the next month.” He was told.

“Six weeks later I received another call to tell me it had all been mapped!”

While this is, perhaps, an extreme case it demonstrates the lack of engagement typically found in process mapping exercises. Why is this important?

A lack of engagement is a symptom that demonstrates a lack on understanding as to what process mapping actually is. The term process mapping is often used to describe to act of documenting a process. However, here we argue that process documentation is only ONE of the outputs of a process mapping exercise. So what is Process Mapping?

Documenting versus mapping

I think of documenting a process as simply capturing what’s in front of you. You’re just documenting what you see. This is typically what happens when processes are captured through one-to-one interviews. The interviewee is explaining what they do and the analyst captures it. It’s one dimensional.

Mapping a process is more like mapping the landscape. You can see what’s in front of you but you can’t see what’s behind that distant hill. You don’t know if there’s a village, or a lake behind it. Mapping requires you to take many different perspectives to build up a model that describes the landscape.

In the same way process mapping is as much about documenting what isn’t obvious, or clear, to each person involved.

It could be argued that running process interviews with different stakeholders will give these perspectives. The problem is that there is little opportunity to challenge different perspectives. It’s left to the analyst to interpret conflicting views without understanding why they happen.

Process workshops

It’s for this reason we recommend live process mapping workshop as the best way to map a process. Participants can describe how things work together. Differences can be discussed and the reasons for these differences ascertained.

Differences in how work gets done typically develops organically and leads to duplication and loss of standardisation. Sometimes these differences are completely valid. It is very difficult for the analyst to identify which is which without the necessary debate generated in a workshop.

Of course one or two workshops won’t completely map the process. An ongoing engagement with the team is required to ensure process maps are kept up to date and relevant.

Keeping the process relevant

A recent customer explained how they use process maps at their weekly team meetings. “We always open the process and have it displayed on the screen while we talk about the week ahead.” She explained. “We are in a heavily regulated industry and operate across more than 100 countries. We have to fit new regulations into our ways of working on a weekly basis.”

“The process maps help us stick to a common language when we discuss the impact of each new regulation. It speeds up the implementation and reduces misunderstanding. It keeps us all on the same page during constant change.”

Processes are rarely changed but the maps ensure the team focus on the relevant area and are aligned on what to do.

Saving time

A further advantage of the process workshop approach is the time it saves. While each person in the room still needs to be taken out of the business the analyst mapping the process only needs to be there once.

When interviewing the analyst spends time with each participant individually. Then they must analyse the output of each interview and understand the differences, often getting agreement through additional meetings later.

Using Skore app further speeds things up as, unlike using sticky notes and whiteboards, processes can be mapped directly into the tool and shared at the end of the workshop. Therefore there’s no need to spend time mapping the process into a tool afterwards.

Process mapping is more than simply documenting a process in front of you. It’s about understanding the different perspectives that make up how that processes is run in a given organisation. It’s about understanding what isn’t obvious and why it happens. A good process map will be accepted by the roles it describes and will be used to continuously improve.