During the twentieth century, the United States became the most productive
nation in the world. This, in turn, has given us a standard of living
that makes us the envy of most of the world. Many factors have combined
to generate this prosperity. One of these factors, which has contributed
trillions of dollars to our benefit, works behind the scenes unknown to
the population that enjoys these benefits. This factor is work
improvement tools— tools designed to enable people to study and improve
the way they do their work.
This book thoroughly describes what, in my estimation, is the one
twentieth century work improvement tool most appropriate for the
twenty-first century. It was specifically developed to chart and improve
information processing at a time when the people who were actually doing
that type of work made up only an insignificant portion of the labor
force. The labor force was then made up mostly of blue-collar employees
working in factories.
Times have changed! Today, the two largest categories of the U.S. labor
force are professional (first) and clerical (second), and their work is
made up almost exclusively of information. Most of us are in the
information-processing business.
The earliest uses of this detailed information process charting technique
were directed at smoothing out paperwork by studying what people did
with their forms and records, step by step. This technique focused on
information processes at a time when people were rather oblivious to
work processes. We have been living in an information society for close
to a quarter of a century, and the general public still knows little and
cares less about information processes—except when they find themselves
inconvenienced and frustrated by the bureaucratic nonsense that so often
permeates the processes. But behind the scenes, a lot of people have
become aware of processes, and consider them to be the most important
factor in work improvement.
The fact that so much bureaucratic nonsense still exists is indicative of
where we stand in the development of the information society. Wherever
we have people making excuses for their work (e.g., “I’m sorry but
that’s our procedure. We have to do it that way. I know it doesn’t make
sense.”), we have another example of people locked into processes rather
than being the masters of them. In spite of all the brilliant technology
at our disposal, we are still in the early stages of the Information
Age, as we were before mechanical drawing and interchangeable parts in
the Industrial Age.
Sure, the word is out that processes are important. But, unfortunately, a
lot of the work that is being done improving processes has lacked the
rigor needed to do it well. Sometimes people attempt to chart processes
by using flowcharts designed for computer systems work, but these are
unable to follow the individual records and do not show the steps of
work that the people do. Sometimes the charting has been little more
than sketches of boxes and lines created from a conversational
walk-through of a process. Sometimes there has been no charting at all.
Yet, regardless of the approach, in time, improvements have usually been
found because there is so much room for improvement.
Because these improvement efforts seem disorganized, they do little for
the confidence of the people performing them, and they discourage the
thought of continuous improvement. But these efforts could have produced
finer improvements much more quickly with less effort and cost if
rigorous technique had been used. And, they could have resulted in
building libraries of process charts maintained on computers providing
the fundamental ingredients needed for continuous process improvement.
Here, now, is a book that makes this rigorous technique available.
This technique was, from its inception, intended for use with teams of
experienced employees. That is not a new idea. Involving employees in
improvement was being done by a lot of the best companies in the
mid-twentieth century. (A number of these companies were singled out as
world leaders by Tom Peters and Bob Waterman in their book
In Search
of Excellence in 1983.) These companies were using a technique
called work simplification . From its beginning in the 1930s, work
simplification focused on making use of the first-hand experience of the
people who did the work. But work simplification was being done in the
factories, and usually involved only one person. They didn’t require
teams.
Improving information processes calls for interdepartmental teams of
employees in order to capture the first-hand experience of the different
parts of the process. This rubs against the grain in a lot of
organizations. I can remember managers looking at me as if I was daft
when I suggested that members of different departments work together on
teams. On one occasion, the reaction was, “Departments working together
on projects! That will never happen in this organization.” In a
different company I was told, “I can see how it would work here, but our
managers aren’t ready for that.” Today the reaction to employee teams is
generally one of acceptance. In some organizations, teams have become
commonplace—even interdepartmental teams.
One of the major catalysts in bringing about this change was M. Scott
Myers, a consultant with whom I worked. His book
Every Employee a
Manager (McGraw-Hill, 1991) introduced the notion of functional
silos . This concept has helped a lot of people to see the need for
getting past the barriers to interdepartmental cooperation.
So, here we are at the start of a new millennium, trying to get our hands
around the work of an information society, absolutely loaded with
exciting new technology. We have companies being led by people who are
aware of the crucial importance of process improvement and who are also
amenable to the idea of having their employees involved in those
improvement efforts.
This book explains the detailed process charting technique carefully
enough that a person with reasonably good graphic skills can expect to
be able to use the technique after reading it. So, get started. Build a
library of process charts, and you will find that the obvious
improvements they reveal will much more than cover the cost of the
effort. Keep track of the savings, chart by chart. Your investment of
time and effort will more than pay for itself. And, you will have a fine
library of process charts (available at no cost) for training, for
continuous improvement, to satisfy regulatory and/or certification
requirements, to raise to a professional level the process analysis you
are doing with Six Sigma, business process reengineering, and so on, and
to put the people of your organization firmly in control of—make them
the masters of—their processes.
DR. BEN S. GRAHAM JR.