A powerful method for process improvement is to map out a process visually, look for friction and problems, and improve the process. Sounds simple right?

In other words, staple yourself (metaphorically, not physically!) to a work item (or document, customer case, etc) and watch it flow (or not) – then address the issues.

Read on or watch the video, or both!

I use the term “staple yourself” as it’s easy to imagine the process of work flowing – and you being stapled to it. It’s also easier to talk about “stapling” with people who are turned off by the very words “process improvement” or "value mapping" etc.

It's important to use words and ideas that resonate with your audience.

The words you use to describe this process will help you succeed in getting people energised around this. If people can understand the activity - and "see" it, they are more likely to bring their energy and attention to it. You will need energy and attention as this process requires input from everyone who is involved in the process. 

If they don’t resonate with how you’re talking about it, it will be harder to get their attention and buy-in.

Trust me, when I stopped referring to everything as process improvement and started talking about how we were going to visualise and staple and flow work through it, people started resonating.

No matter what you call it though, it’s not easy to map out a process and get improvements made to it.

No matter how hard it is though, it is an essential activity for management. In fact, it should be one of the primary activities of management – improving the system.

The work, processes and systems belong to management/execs, hence process improvement is a core aspect of being a successful manager.

If you’re not improving the world of work for those under your care, what are you spending your time doing?

The key to improving the flow of work is understanding how it flows through the various work systems.

How to staple yourself to work

Here’s a few thoughts on how to do it:

Get the right people in the room

Stapling requires knowledge, which comes from studying, and the best people to provide that knowledge are the very people who are working within the process itself.

They usually know what the problems are and what needs to be done to improve it. So they must be in the sessions with you.

Give them a heads-up before the meeting and ask them to bring data and insights with them about their own work. No point inviting them along and then springing this on them.

Ask them how work flows through their part of the process and ask them to bring any stories, evidence, data that backs up their observations of the process.

It may be possible to literally observe the work as it flows through a process from team to team, but in my experience that becomes tricky due to long wait times, lack of visibility and unstable metrics.

In many organisations work travels digitally not physically too – which is tricky to observe, but should be measured.

So, it’s best to get those involved together with their own data and staple as a team!

The room

You’ll need a large room with a big wall and plenty of post it notes and index cards (plus sticky tack). Or a digital tool like Mural for remote teams.

Food is also welcome and makes the session go better.

Book at least 1.5 hours depending on how complicated the process is. Typically you’ll need a few of these sessions, but for the first one keep it simple and short.

In my experience you’ll be missing someone who has deep insights from this first meeting, so don’t make it too long. If you don’t have all of the right people in the room, you’ll have incomplete information.

In my experience everyone who interacts or works within the process will have a different opinion of the process. They will likely know the part they play in it, have assumptions about what others do, and often very little insight in to the higher level overall flow.

This session teases that out and also increases collective awareness – double points.

Involve managers too as they have responsibility for this (although they may not believe it or agree with you) and they also need to sponsor the subsequent improvements – which will take people away from their current work plans.

Start stapling!

This is where you take the item you are tracking (piece of work, customer case, new customer on the platform, new employee, sale etc) and you map its journey.

You staple yourself to it and join it on its journey.

Literally think of yourself as being stapled to the item. Follow it through the process as it flows (or doesn’t) and record, on a post-it or index card, every single interaction, stage, wait, delay or handover. It doesn’t matter how small that interaction is, you want to record it.

Let the work item pull you through the process as you log and record every step, interaction, wait, pause and assigned task – all with the data, insights and knowledge of the very people who work within this process.

It’s a ridiculously tough task to do.

Ideally you’ll track “does take” time. "Does take" time is the exact amount of time it takes to flow through the system. For example, if a piece of work takes someone two weeks to complete it, then the "does take" time should be noted as two weeks, or 10 days. Try to work in days.

Also log “wait times” – how long work gets stuck at various stages. For example, maybe you're improving a customer service process and a customer case waits in a queue for 1 day - log that wait time.

You may need to capture these measures across a number of different examples or occurrences of work in the process - as times will likely vary (people, complexity etc).

Ensure its a visual

Map it across the wall or board (or digital tool) as it flows. I like to work left to right – do what makes sense for you.

The goal is to have an end-to-end visual model/diagram/chart of everything that happens with input from those who do the work.

Don’t map what you believe the process should look like, or what you want the process to look like. Map what it does look like, no matter how gnarly and stress inducing. Your goal is to get knowledge so you can make informed improvements and decisions.

It’s super important to visualise it. Being able to see the process visually represented is powerful.

You realise quite how big and complicated a process is when it is visualised. It’s also a powerful way of engaging other people from across the business.

People can gather around it, move things, discuss details, see bottlenecks, drag others over to see it – it’s tactile and in your face. Show the process – warts and all. Only by accepting reality can you realistically change it.

Hence I like to use index cards for the main interactions (running left to right) and post-it notes for tasks, communication and errands within that main interaction (running up and down). But do what works for you – it’s your diagram. Just be sure it’s reasonably self-explanatory for any casual passerby.

There is something really compelling about seeing, what should be a simple process, mapped with lots of hand-offs and interactions.

This visual representation is also a powerful lever to pull with managers and senior execs, who may have no idea what it takes to deliver for your customers.

Once you have an end to end process mapped out - ask some critical questions from the insights you have.

Note : You define what end-to-end means. Ideally it would be from idea to value, or customer case to resolution, or lead to a sale. In other words the true end-to-end process but it could be simply one part of a much bigger process.

Study and gain knowledge

Spend time studying what you have mapped. Don’t jump to conclusions immediately. Ask questions.

Look for patterns, gaps, duplicate steps, bottlenecks, activities that rely on just a single person (single point of failure) and long wait times.

  • What does the process look like?
  • Are there any bottlenecks?
  • Does the process fall over at any point?
  • What alternative paths through the process are there?
  • Does work go back and forth?
  • Does "completed" work come back in?
  • What communication flows, or doesn't?
  • Who is involved in this process?
  • Where are the wait times?
  • How long does the work take to complete its journey?
  • What are the hand-overs like?
  • Are there long wait times, why?

Spend time discussing steps that stand out. Get the opinions of everyone in the room about where they think the problems are and why. Encourage open dialogue about where things are not as good as they could be.

Use facts, data and measures. Try not to take opinions as fact.

Don’t forget to focus on what is going well too.

You may find there are no obvious improvements at all – I’ve never seen this happen! Focus on the good stuff – focus on what works and see if you can replicate what works in one part to somewhere else.

Draw Utopia

Now spend time drawing or designing what you want your future state to look like.

What does Utopia for this process look like? What would awesome look like? What would make your end customer say “WOW”, or your delivery team have an easier time at work?

Align it next to your current state and see how they differ. What needs to change?

The gap between what you currently do and what you want to do can be a helpful catalyst and visual guide for how to improve. It may make you cry.

Alternatively, don't draw Utopia and simply pick away at the improvements you can see, or want to make.

Document and communicate

This step is the hardest.

Most people do the hard work of stapling themselves and mapping, but then don’t follow through with the improvements. It is hard though and often requires cross team cooperation – which is sometimes not forthcoming for a variety of reasons.

The first step is to document your work.

Store your notes somewhere like a wiki or Intranet, add the context from the discussions, who was involved, where, when etc etc. This gives you more information to support the changes, and ensures your information is 60 days proof.

Communicate your summary and visuals to everyone who was in the session. Ask them to add to it, delete it and correct anything. This way you get alignment and everyone on the same wave length.

Communicate it to the wider business. Ask for input, comments and questions. The chances are somebody else in the business will have an opinion or even be involved directly in the process. It’s not easy getting all of the right people in the room

Be careful with opinions without data or knowledge to back it up though. Keep pointing at the data to drive out assumptions, opinions and "feelings" about the process. Believe it or not, some people like having dysfunctional system and processes around them

Create a plan for change

How you plan and execute is all your style. Chalk up a high level plan with milestones and suitable measures against this purpose. Back casting from the utopian future can be a helpful approach.

Build a team, or agree how people within the processes themselves will do the work. Get buy-in from all leaders and managers involved. Then iterate through the plans and tasks with regular measures, reviews and active communication.

For example – you may have studied the process of on-boarding a new customer to your platform. You stapled yourself to the customer (not physically!) as they on-boarded. You have areas to improve.

After mapping the process you and the team decide to set a goal to on-board all new customers within 5 days and ensure they all join with a WOW experience (A worthy goal if ever there was one).

A measure for success may be the elapsed time it takes to onboard them – this might be measured in days and can essentially be a real-time measure. Another measure might be how satisfied the customer is after or during on-boarding (a survey maybe), or whether the customer pays their first invoice, or whether they remain a customer after 3+ months for example.

Lots of measures, some lagging, some real time, some leading.

These measures will be in your plan - and you will need buy-in from everyone involved in this process; legal, HR, Sales, etc

Get to work.

Slow is smooth, smooth is fast

Go smoothly though – it can be quite tempting to go flat out and change the world, but you may be going more quickly than your business, team or processes can realistically go.

Smooth, methodical and well measured changes are important. Fix one thing at a time - and measure. This way you’ll know what makes a positive difference, and what has made things worse. After all, not all changes or experiments are positive.

Changing too many parts of the process can lead to confusion over what worked and what didn’t.

Often when you change a process you are changing the way people work. This can require calm, clear communication, a concrete vision and suitable coaching and training. Going smoothly through the process improvements can be very helpful in these circumstances.

Remember that change is usually fine for most people, if they themselves don’t have to change. If people have to change you may face resistance, a lack of cooperation and slow progress.

A word of caution.

Always work on making the process effective first before making it efficient. It can be tempting to make everything efficient – but being efficient at doing something wrong doesn’t make sense.

And there you have it – a potential way to map and improve a process using the stapling technique – I hope it was helpful.

Need help moving smoothly and quickly towards your goals - I might be able to help.

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