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I used to help facilitate six sigma training classes, and one of the more fundamental courses taught was process mapping. This was to ensure the students knew how to document existing and future processes and process interactions, and how to communicate with project teams about the whole process.
Often participants in an improvement project are confident they understand the process under study. The reality is they only see it from the perspective of their role. This can prevent the team from uncovering the “hidden factory” and may lead the team astray to fix a symptom rather than the root cause. This process blindness reminds me of an old fable called the “Blind Men and an Elephant“.
Three blind men were trying to come to consensus about describing an elephant. The problem is that one man had only touched the tail, the second one only the trunk and the third man touched only the two front legs. Each had an accurate description of an elephant part. They were right! Each was confident they understood what an elephant was. Yet, none had the big picture of the whole elephant as they struggled to accomplish their objective.
Teams rarely think it’s worth the time to document the existing process. Why do that? Everyone knows what happens, right??
I used a great exercise where we would ask each student to get a blank piece of paper and draw 2 circles. I started a timer and then gave them 10 minutes (laptops closed) with instructions to not look at neighbor’s paper (or their pockets) and only from memory draw a penny front and back.
Then I asked a few people who felt confident that they got it right. They would boldly step forward and declare their reproduction of a penny from memory. Lots of laughs from the crowd about the variation from presenter to presenter gave general guidance that few were even close to the right answer.
Then I would break the class into small groups and give them a flip chart per team and instructing them to use consensus (but no other aids) to come up with the “right answer. Again, I asked the confident teams to present their version of the truth.
Clearly, there was improvement from the individual exercise. But no one team ever got it 100% right.
Then I bring out the penny for every team to examine. Only then did the teams realize that something as common as a penny, which although you have the opportunity to look at every day, is not truly observed.
If we can transfer this learning to the planning phase of supply chain improvement projects, we just might find ourselves spending less time arguing and debating during the execution phase and perhaps have more productive and happier teams!
Before starting any improvement project make sure all the participants of the process are fully engaged and participating, especially in documenting the as-is state. A solid understanding of the improvement baseline will make it easier to develop the future state since everyone is starting from the same version of the truth. The hidden factory will be minimized and it will also make it easier at the end of the project to measure what was achieved if everyone was in harmony about the starting point.
Your improvement project may be an elephant so let’s make sure your team has perfect vision.
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Tags: Collaboration, Lean manufacturing, Supply chain management
Posted in Best practices, Lean manufacturing
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Great story! I’ve seen executive teams waste hours on end trying to map out a process that at first, looked like a simple exercise but turned into a debate that caused confusion and disagreement, and did not yield any new insights to improve anything. As a change management practitioner, I’ve seen a similar thing happened with teams that even after a presentation by an executive or project team leader explaining what the mission of the team is in different pages as to what the 1) real objective is, 2) what the end game is, 3) what’s in or out of scope, and 4) what their roles are or need to be to be successful as a team.
I use seemingly simple but powerful tools to help teams create not only alignment but ownership of these critical areas of any team charter. Just to mention one example…to test and create alignment about the objective of a project. I ask the team members to write in 20 words or less (on a post-it mid-size sheet) what they understand the objective of the project to be. We post individual answers and compare. It’s amazing how different the answers are! Through a structured facilitation approach the group is able to create not only consensus about the objective but they create mutual understanding, there is give and take, they clarify their assumptions and expectations and in the end, they ‘feel’ more ownership of the project because they have participated not only in the process of discovery but many times in the process of defining the objective. Other tools and approaches make use of similar techniques to help teams ’see’ the elephant for what it is by putting the pieces together in a way that allows everyone to contribute, feel heard, see what other are seeing, and put into context their own views and understanding of the issue at hand they are trying to define (process, objectives, goals, roles, etc.). Whichever tool one uses, the important thing is to help the team arrive at the point where THEY KNOW they are looking at the elephant, not just the trunk!
I would like to take the analogy in a new direction: Outsourcing. I maintain that outsourcing is a financial instrument, not and operational instrument. We have gone from “3 blind men and an elephant” (insourced with imperfect communication) to “6 blind men and an elephant carcass” (outsourced to different contract manufacturers with different financial objectives).
Of course we are not going to see the reversal of outsourcing because of the compelling financial arguments. What I am arguing is that the relationships between brand owner and contract manufacturer become collaborative rather than combative. The exercises described by David and Marcelino would go a long way to achieve a more collaborative relationship.
Hi David.
Well done! My company has been teaching and providing consulting services in process improvement for over 50 years. Our method is built around a detailed process map that provides understanding and focus for a team of folks involved in the work.
Far too often, process mapping is given only cursory attention or is overlooked altogether. Imaging this approach in manufacturing or construction…”We don’t need a blueprint, we have a good feel for it.”
The penny exercise is a great way to demonstrate the gap between high-level understanding and detailed understanding.