Meandering Mind - Eva Dillner [18]
We'd talk, I would get the information I needed to restructure the reports to be truly useful. In working with the recipients in this way I also built relationships with them. I asked what the customer needed. And I simplified my job - a lot. Writing reports is not a money making activity in most businesses, but rather a tool for the organization to use in making that money. It's important to focus on that which gives the biggest bang for the buck. Being busy is not the same as being effective. And efficiency is not necessarily congruent with being in the flow of life energy. When we follow the life energy, we take what appears to be detours that actually lead us more effectively to where we need to go.
The next re-engineering example is perhaps a better one to illustrate life energy flow.
Connect the dots
Increased quality levels and streamlined communications by connecting users directly with producers at shop floor level.
I see organizations as a flow of life energy. It's very simple really. Organize the work around the natural flow of energy and your organization will work very well and make money for you. People will be happier and you eliminate unneeded bureaucracy.
In the old organization, if there was a problem with packaging supplies on the shop floor, the employee would need to contact his or her supervisor, who in turn contacted the quality control supervisor, who in turn contacted me as the person responsible for purchasing packaging materials. I would contact the sales manager at the supplier, he would contact their quality control manager, who would contact the production manager and in the end get to the employee who actually produced the stuff.
Many organizations have this system. You can imagine how diluted and delayed the information gets by the time it gets back to the guy who made it. It doesn't even make much sense, but that's true of many organization ideas. They are built on control and hierarchy and not on the natural flow of energy.
I started talking to the people in the whole communication chain. I said, “look, if we could connect the actual user directly with the producer, we would simplify the process and improve the communication chain. How about we look at ways to connect them and the rest of us step out of the chain?” I was lucky that I worked in a place and in an environment where new ideas were welcomed and the overall objective of the business was to drive decisions to the lowest possible level and streamline operations.
In my discussions with all the people involved we came up with a plan. Our shop floor personnel would visit the supplier's manufacturing plant and get to know the people and their process. Then the supplier's shop floor personnel would come to our factory. The project was a huge success. Not only were quality levels improved, but new production improvement ideas surfaced, relationships were built, processes understood and best of all, our shop floor employees were empowered.
More than once I heard, “if I have a problem with wrappers from our supplier, I just pick up the phone and call the guy who made them, and we sort it out between us.” You could hear the pride in their voices. They liked feeling a part of the chain. The rest of us were superfluous to that process. We put in place a system where we would be informed on a summary basis, which served our needs. And yes, rejects went down and quality levels improved.
Getting the people involved, making them a part of the process and empowering them to make decisions that affect them, works every time. It's been said many times before by many different people, but it bears repeating.
Re-engineering a whole process
Reduced development cycle time 60% from concept to finished product by discovering real instead of written processes and procedures, by streamlining