Processes Archives - understand-culture

Processes provide clarity

Processes provide clarity. They allow employees to concentrate on core activities. They lead to cost reductions by identifying and eliminating unnecessary work steps. Thinking in terms of processes – how the work should be done – strengthens conscientious work and allows for quality control.

Well documented processes are critical for orienting new employees. Processes make transparent, make understandable, each and every segment of complex work methods. They are the basis for optimization, for reducing mistakes, for root cause analysis of systemic errors. All of these benefits lead to increased product quality. Work processes, however, must be understood and accepted by those doing the actual work.

In Germany it is critical that processes do not take on the character of laws, but instead remain guidelines. German workers expect a certain level of freedom in terms of how they perform their daily tasks. Processes should not become a kind of straightjacket.

Process procedure

Process: Progress, advance; something going on; a natural phenomenon marked by gradual changes that lead toward a particular result; a series of actions or operations conducing to an end; the whole course of proceedings in a legal action. Middle English proces, from Anglo-French procés, from Latin processus.

Procedure: A particular way of accomplishing something or of acting; a series of steps followed in a regular definite order; a set of instructions for a computer that has a name by which it can be called into action; a traditional or established way of doing things. French procédure.

Process or procedure: Americans define a procedure simply as a subset of a process. A procedure describes how one executes a specific task within a process. Again, the what and the how are spelled out clearly. American procedures typically have the following elements: purpose and application, individual steps, parties responsible, and the documentation, so that the individual actions taken can be accessed at a later time.

Americans draw a clear line between a process and a procedure. A process describes broadly what an organization, group, small team or individual team member needs to do. A procedure describes not only a specific task within that overall process, but also how that task is to be executed.

An American procedure can be formulated broadly or narrowly. A broad formulation allows for some interpretation and creativity in executing a procedure. A narrow procedure description seeks to avoid interpretation. One should stick to the procedure strictly.

Pragmatism

Tool: A handheld device that aids in accomplishing a task; something as an instrument or apparatus used in performing an operation or necessary in the practice of a vocation or profession; an element of a computer program that activates and controls a particular function; a means to an end; one that is used or manipulated by another. From Old English tōl to prepare for use. First known use 12th century.

Enable: To provide with the means or opportunity; to make possible, practical, or easy; to cause to operate; to give legal power, capacity, or sanction to.

Pragmatic: Relating to matters of fact or practical affairs, often to the exclusion of intellectual or artistic matters; practical as opposed to idealistic; relating to or being in accordance with philosophical pragmatism. Latin pragmaticus, skilled in law or business, from Greek pragmatikos,from pragmat-, pragma deed, from prassein to do.

Pragmatism: A philosophical movement first given systematic expression by Charles Sanders Pierce and William James and later by John Dewey. Pragmatists emphasize the practical function of knowledge, as an instrument for adapting to reality and controlling it. Pragmatism, like empiricism, emphasizes experience over a priori reasoning (deductive, using presumptions).

Pragmatism holds that truth is to be found in the process of verification. Pragmatists interpret ideas as instruments and plans of action rather than as images of reality. More specifically, ideas are suggestions and anticipations of possible conduct. They are hypotheses or forecasts of what will result from a given action.

Day planners

Early in American history, it was not uncommon for people to use almanacs as day planners. Many of the founding fathers, including George Washington, would buy almanacs and then add their own blank pages to serve as a diary and record of their daily activities.

The first book that was specifically marketed for use as a day planner was published in Philadelphia in 1773 by Robert Aitken. It was called Aitken’s General American Register, and the Gentleman’s and Tradesman’s Complete Annual Account Book and Calendar, for the Pocket or Desk for the Year of our Lord 1773, and was unsuccessful in the publishing world. Nevertheless, by 1850 day planners and their various incarnations (diaries, scrapbooks, ledgers, account books, etc.) were extremely popular.

In 1900, business innovator John Wanamaker decided to produce day planners with his store catalog and advertisements from other companies. These planners became very widespread and were a contributing factor to Wanamaker’s business success.

Today day planners are still extremely popular. Although sales of paper planners are dropping, sales of electronic planners are strong, and there are still many organizations that successfully market day planners to the American public.

Navel-gazing

Useless or excessive self-contemplation; self-absorption, self-centeredness, self-concern, self-interest, self-involvement, self-preoccupation, self-regard. Navel-gazing.

Too much self. Too little other. Self being the process, how the work is done. Other being those who should benefit from the work to be done, the output, the product or service.

The deeper Germans discuss and debate how the work is done – process – the more their American colleagues fear a turn from the outward to the inward. The link is lost between process (how the work is done) and the results.

Americans often have the sense that their German counterparts believe that process can solve any problem, address any challenge, even those which do not lend themselves to process. Leadership. Decision making. Business relationships. Process works with the measurable, the quantifiable, but less so to the immeasurable, the unquantifiable.

For Americans, process is a tool. Apply where applicable.

Adam Smith and the division of labor

Adam Smith’s understanding of a process – in the sense of division of labor – can be read in his famous statement about how a pin is producted:

”One man draws out the wire, another straights it, a third cuts it, a fourth points it, a fifth grinds it at the top for receiving the head: to make the head requires two or three distinct operations: to put it on is a particular business, to whiten the pins is another … and the important business of making a pin is, in this manner, divided into about eighteen distinct operations, which in some manufactories are all performed by distinct hands, though in others the same man will sometime perform two or three of them.”

Henry Ford’s Assembly Line

One of the few Americans to focus on processes was Henry Ford. Born in Michigan in 1863 Ford began an apprenticeship as a machinist at the age of 16, and in 1891 he was hired as an engineer for the Edison Illuminating Company. Five years later, he constructed his first model of a horseless carriage, which he called the Ford Quadricycle. In 1903, Henry Ford started the Ford Motor Company, and soon began selling the Model A.

But Ford’s legacy was less in automobile design, and more in his manufacturing processes. Between his assembly line, which allowed cars to be assembled quickly with standardized parts, and his decision to add small amounts of vanadium to his steel, which made the steel production process much easier (not to mention resulted in stronger and more durable steel), Ford revolutionized the way that cars were produced, allowing them to be produced quickly and cheaply – which in turn allowed them to be sold in large numbers at a low price.

Craftsmanship

America history is made up of waves of immigration, the earliest ones bringing with them and maintaining the deep European tradition of craftsmanship. That focus on how the work is done – imbedded in what later became processes and procedures – gave way, however, to Taylorism, mechanization, mass production, and eventually to the outsourcing of manufacturing to low-wage countries.

That tradition – the European medieval guilds – craftsmanship, caring about how the work is done – is being reintroduced to the United States via its current reindustrialization. German companies, for example, are not only increasing manufacturing capacity in the U.S., they are importing their methods for training skilled workers. European, more precisely, German craftsmanship is returning to America.

Importance of price: No business culture gladly admits that price is a critical success factor. The U.S. business and consumer sectors are both strongly influenced by price. Americans buy and sell more on price than on craftsmanship.

William Edwards Deming

William Edwards Deming (1900-1993) was an American statistician and physicist, as well as a pioneer in the field of quality management. In the 1940’s he developed the process-oriented perspective of business activities, which were later introduced into various tutorials on quality management.

However, for many years Deming’s discoveries received very little attention in the U.S. Not so in Japan. There his insights were of great interest to leading industry managers. Why? The explanation given is that in the U.S. a maximization of production volume was the primary focus of industry following the worldwide reduction of production capacity following WWII.

This was possible to do without problem in the un-damaged USA. War-torn Japan, however, had limited resources for production, which pulled the optimization of processes into the foreground.

Deming’s story is initially a comparison between the U.S. and Japan. Yet the reasons why Japan’s industries became so process-oriented surely provide insight as to how Germany became to be so process-focused as well.

Listen to the first 3.5 minutes of Steve Jobs:

Rules are made to be broken

In America, refusing to deviate from the rules is often perceived as negative behavior. There is a popular saying which states that “rules are made to be broken.” American General Douglas MacArthur famously expanded on this phrase and said “Rules are mostly made to be broken and are too often for the lazy to hide behind.”

Sam Walton, the founder of the Wal-Mart chain (which became the largest corporation in the world in 2002), wrote in his autobiography that the most important rule in business is to break all of the rules. He also gave preference to rule-breakers when hiring employees, as he considered them superior workers to their rule-following counterparts.

Many of the best known American scientists and engineers were also rule-breakers. Bill Gates broke the rules with his innovative software, Henry Ford with his moving assembly line and welfare capitalism, and the Wright brothers with their fixed wing aircraft, just to name a few.