CX process mapping: Kill a stupid rule

CX Process Mapping: Kill A Stupid Rule

We spend a lot of time in companies discussing “process mapping,” which is — theoretically, and sometimes in reality — a way to make our processes more effective. If you’ve had a number of enterprise-type jobs, you’ve probably seen the dreaded idea of “process for the sake of process,” whereby all these rules and processes are layered on top of each other before any action can be taken. Customer-driven growth engines are nearly impossible in this context. When you have stupid rules and layers of process mapping, you have annoyed, possibly burnt-out employees. People take jobs for the salary, yes — but most people take jobs because the problem they will get to work on is appealing to them. Bad process mapping interferes with that. Stupid rules interfere with that. No one wants to spend their entire workday, be it 8 hours or 15, on process and checking boxes. People want to pursue action and problem-solving. (Well, most people that I’ve worked with.)

Here’s the easiest way to say it, as I noted in Chief Customer Officer 2.0: when you improve your employees’ lives, they work harder and ultimately improve your customers’ lives. It happens in organizations of all sizes.

So this is how we’re going to improve process mapping for the sake of customer experience: we’re going to kill a stupid rule!

Process Mapping: The kill a stupid rule process

You are going to begin by engaging employees. Ask them to find rules or elements of the company process that do one of these two things (or, sadly, both):

  • Erode customer trust
  • Diminish employees’ ability to do their jobs

Here’s a third category, too:

  • Rules that just don’t make any sense

Employees deal with these types of rules all day, so they can be quick to ID them. Collect a list and run it through senior teams and execution-level customer-facing teams. Eliminate a healthy percentage of these rules (allow managers the ability to push back on the elimination of some, yes).

Then announce to your employees which rules have been killed, why, and how the process unfolded. I call this “marketing hope.” You are making sure that employees know they are listened to. This encourages a greater commitment back to the organization.

Process Mapping: What’s a stupid rule?

This varies by company, of course, but let me give you a couple of examples:

  • “All documents must reside in X-place before they can be weighed in on:” It’s good to have a central repository and version control, of course. But a rule like this is usually process for the sake of process. Managers around a company respond to one-off documents on email all day. Someone needs to be managing versions on customer-facing documents, but having explicit rules that hold up a process is bad for business.
  • Tiers and tiers of sign-offs on simple decisions: I know someone who worked on a customer-facing one-pager once. A one-pager, mind you. He shared it with his boss in Google Docs. Within about a day, 19 people had requested access to the document. This happens a lot in companies — per research from Bain, most companies with $5 billion valuations have 14 layers between the CEO and the customer. That’s a lot of layers. Having a check box at every layer may feel like you’re securing accountability, but you’re usually just removing empowerment and employees’ ability to do their jobs. It’s a stupid rule, then. To have better process mapping, remove it.

What else would you add on process mapping? And/or what stupid rules have you seen?

Written by Jeanne Bliss under on October 27, 2016 1 Comment

1 comment to " CX process mapping: Kill a stupid rule "

  • Reply
    Roman Bos
    November 28, 2016 AT 2:16PM

    In my experience while working on a myriad of processes across different industries and organizations I created myself a simple yet effective triangle. What I call a, “Process Constraint Triangle (PCT).” I used this to uncover the attributes of “Great” Processes. What constitutes a great process? Although there are many attributes toward creating an effective and dynamic process one must consider the common pitfalls that all processes often encounter. These are manifested in the following way:
    – Waste
    – Hand-offs
    – Complexity

    With this high level understanding about the common pitfalls we can now better realize those attributes that create bad and or poor processes. The PCT exemplifies this. If your processes contain one or all three you can see that the triangle cannot sustain itself and falls apart thus exposing your business to unnecessary risks. As indicated at the center of the triangle below I have used the PCT in a reverse way to also highlight that opportunities exist for your organization to tackle, make better and improve upon through your continuous improvement teams should your processes contain one or all three constraints.

    These are simple yet some fundamental questions to ask that need to be taken into serious consideration, not taken for granted and answered before creating, implementing and or rolling out new or revised processes. The next time you find yourself about to “Go-Live” with your processes ask yourself those three simple questions and be sure to answer them with empirical data and not gut feel or I think so type answers.

    I challenge everyone in the spirit of, “making things better” to give it a try today in coordination with performing a “Gemba Walk” on your processes and find out for yourself as a Leader of your team, organization and or company. You never know what you might find out, what surprises lurk just around the corner, beneath the surface of your processes and what you will make better!

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