You may have heard of Flow Engineering and how it has taken continuous improvement to a whole new level. You might be skeptical or even think this is not for us. If so, you might be surprised to find that Flow Engineering easily applies to any process within any business. In this series we plan to explore the various aspects of business that could be screaming for help. By connecting those situational cries for help we reveal that Flow Engineering concepts apply.
If you have not heard of Flow Engineering, then you should know that the main point is to continually improve how value is delivered to customers. Flow Engineering leverages a series of generative maps that bring to light process details like never before. This increased awareness enables data-driven decisions and opportunities worthy of improvement. The cascading awareness brought about by these maps ultimately results in a roadmap detailing what is to be done, who will be doing it and when.
Flow Engineering in a nutshell
The magic of Flow Engineering comes from tapping into the expertise of the people that are most intimately familiar with the target process. This is often an eye-opener for everyone involved to see the reality for the first time of how work really gets done. Here is a quick reminder of the maps involved in Flow Engineering and the high level of how they fit in:
Flow Engineering shines brightest when the people involved in doing the work take ownership of how they do the work and own improving it. In doing so, teams leverage their expertise and creativity focusing on the removal of the constraints that are crippling the flow of value to customers. The various maps involved with Flow Engineering make possible greater clarity, alignment, buy-in, and engagement, like never before. This all combines to take continuous improvement to a whole new level of success and impact. These days employees need to go beyond their specific skills and take ownership of how they work. This happens best organically by continually leveraging their ability to learn and evolve how they work within a system.
Flow Engineering targets and culture
Such targeted improvements ought to be small and incremental so that you can reap the benefits quickly. This creates a snowball effect that not only enables more improvements but significantly boosts employee engagement and sets into motion inertia and enthusiasm for even more optimizations. When Flow Engineering becomes a widespread aspect of business culture it pays immediate dividends. Over time the combined impact of these Flow Engineering inspired gains results in a tidal wave of improvements that liberates capacity to do more and triggers an avalanche of innovation.
You might be saying to yourself – “Self, that sounds great and all, but we are doing fine and have no need for an invasive ‘Yet Another Performance Improvement’ (YAPI) tactic”. Well, you might be right, but Flow Engineering is quite the opposite at least regarding invasiveness. Flow Engineering is an easy to learn and lightweight method that consistently yields rapid and impactful results. It meets you where you currently are with no need for an expensive platform, extensive training or invasive impact on daily operations. The proposed changes are collaboratively designed to be small, incremental and non-invasive so they come without negative side effects. How and when you implement your Flow Engineering generated changes depends on the urgency and capacity which you can control.
Pairing Flow Engineering with Risk Management
It is well understood that anything that impedes business performance can be approached as a form of risk. Flow Engineering pairs well with Risk Management because both individual and collective process performance manifests as risk. Flow Engineering goes beyond and builds on predecessor improvement methods by improving clarity, alignment, focus, engagement, and more while reducing risk. The net result is higher quality, greater performance, and increased customer satisfaction with more buy-in all around with less skepticism and resistance to the changes needed for success.
OK then you might be saying to yourself again – “Self, we don’t have any situations that we are struggling with enough to explore this.” Well, the truth is that a simple pilot exploration into Flow Engineering with even a small target problem area will help to confirm or deny this perception. More likely than not though this exploration will reveal that Flow Engineering methods in action are effective at revealing opportunities to improve in some meaningful way. Such opportunities might be big or small, but each are very likely to have a positive impact. Exposing such blind spots can be liberating and bring about a strong desire to go deeper and insist that this concept spreads across the company.
Still skeptical about Flow Engineering? If so, then know this…
- Ignoring continuous improvement, you are most certainly losing ground with competitors who embrace it
- Product quality and delivery performance is not what it could be resulting in higher operational costs and poor performance due to rework and/or lost customers
- Employee engagement and dissatisfaction are likely to suffer
- Missed opportunities for success and growth get lost in the inefficient grind of the status quo
- Small investments in target improvements pay for themselves very quickly
- Regulatory compliance might insist on continuous improvement efforts so you might as well do it right
Beyond that companies that embrace Flow Engineering tend to:
- Enjoy highly optimized processes with less waste and effort consumed
- Consistently deliver high quality products and services to customers
- Have lower operational costs
- Have higher employee morale, engagement and retention
- Experience increased opportunity to expand with new innovations
- Be unencumbered with adherence to regulatory compliance requirements
- Have a strong competitive advantage
Now that we are past all of that introductory stuff, we can shift focus toward the triggers that might be suggesting to you that there is a real need to explore Flow Engineering. We have a short series of planned articles that goes deep into various triggers that we have identified. If any of these resonate with you then there is a strong possibility that Flow Engineering can improve the various situations that you are facing.
- #1 – Flow Engineering Triggers: Clarity
- #2 – Flow Engineering Triggers: Alignment
- #3 – Flow Engineering Triggers: Focus
- #4 – Flow Engineering Triggers: Engagement (coming soon)
- #5 – Flow Engineering Triggers: Customer Satisfaction (coming soon)
- #6 – Flow Engineering Triggers: Quality (coming soon)
- #7 – Flow Engineering Triggers: Performance (coming soon)
- #8 – Flow Engineering Triggers: Chaos (coming soon)
Maybe you have more that we could explore. If so, please add in the comments below and we will see what we can do.
Leave a Reply