Tips for Developing a Process Mindset

Make a distinction between core and support processes. 

The following tips can help your team develop a process mindset:

• Help your employees understand that the team's work is composed of tasks that result in an output.  The way these tasks are put together is a process.  Each person in the team is part of one or more business processes.
• Ask people involved in a process to map the steps in the process.  Ask them to identify the inputs and outputs for each step. 
• Invite people to specify the inputs necessary for their work, to describe the work they do, and to identify the outputs.  Ask them, "Who receives your outputs?  What do they do with the outputs?  How does the quality of your outputs affect their job?"
• Make a distinction between core and support processes.  Core processes deliver value to customers directly; for example, customers support and product development.   Support processes enable core processes and include hiring and training, budget approvals, purchasing, and other everyday operations.
• Have "upstream" workers interview "downstream" workers to see how upstream work affects downstream work.  For example, order-entry people could question customer-fulfillment people to determine how unclear specifications and lack of customer information affects the processing of orders.
• Create a flow chart of the processes in your team.  Then explore with your team what happens when variations--accommodating last-minute requests, not following established communications steps--are introduced into the process.  consider how workers and customers are affected when people don't follow established processes.

ACTION POINT: Use the steps above to identify and reinforce core and support  processes in your organization.