Today was interesting. Of the many things that happened I wish to write about the ‘most’ interesting one.
Here goes…
A supposedly process expert, came into the meeting with his laptop and all the print outs of flowcharts and presentation slides and a bunch of other documents. So one of the discussion was the maturity of a working group. and he went on saying….
…..If i go to the operation people, and ask them to draw me a full process flow end to end….I don’t think they can provide me with the accurate info….
Maybe it’s just me, who thinks this. But if I would have asked a question to someone and that person is not able to answer, it would make it that that person does not have enough ‘maturity’? this is coming froma person who is certified in almost everything that is anything. Whatever.
Let’s say I have a question:
…what year was it when Ferrari launched the first prototype of the GTB model and what was the codename during it’s testing in Monza…?
Whatever your answers are, I’d still say “WhateveR”. If it’s a question, then it relates to knowledge and never to maturity. Pertty stright forward isn’t it? Just the very thought of it, there couldn’t be any other answer.
But for the heck of it let’s digress. This is, a blog after all.
If I’d ask a question and the other person knows the answer, say, “What planet are we living on now?”. And the other person answers, say, “I’m sorry, I guess I don’t know”. Then is could be a knowledge issue. However if the answer is, say, “We’re living on planet earth. What are you, E.T.?”. Then this is maturity issue. Deffinitely not knowledge issue due to the corect answer given, albeit the comment we could do without. Then, if the answer is “I don’t know”. There’s no question mark. It could be both maturity and knowledge issue. But the intonation deffinitely suggest a following comment, which could be, “…and I don’t care”. This is of course a maturity issue. Refuse to respond in an honest manner confirms it. So what if the answer is, say, “I’m sorry, I don’t know. Shall we find out about this?”. Then is is not maturity issue. Even if there is a knowledge issue, there’s also interest to fill that gap.
During the discussion with the person in question, i somewhat get a sense of ignorance and egoist. Ignorance due to not willing to go directly to the operation to get the answers. Egoist when insisting that he is not wrong, and somewhat giving small clues that I’m not right on my arguments. If you want accurate date accumulation you should study the root cause. Not get answers from representatives that are already process experts. We are no the ones who’s going to get yelled at by their clients. The Frontline Operations Team are. If they are not involved in this, then we wil never know what process will work and what wil not. and if the process is slowing down the Frontline Ops, then they would respond with maturity issue. In the end, if they follow this process, we owe them one final thing. “What’s in it for me?”.
I’m going to compile these issues and bring forth to the Management Team that their improvement project is only going to conjure up process documents, but will never achieve the desired results. Process Experts always thin of the perfect process but not the most practical one. As fo me, if the process exists but no one is following it. It’d throw it out the wondow.
And the answer to my first question above is……I HavE No iDea MySelF!
