Two types of workflow: software and human system

There are two sides to workflow: software workflow and human interaction systems (aka business processes).  Understanding both of these helps us understand our systems overall.  We need to be expert at both to really understand what's going on at all in today's complex systems and organizations.

There are two main types of workflows in our lives: software workflows and human system workflows.  Software workflows are the experiences we have on our devices (computer, laptop, smartphone, etc.).  Human workflows are a view of our organizations that are about the overall mix of people, artifacts, inputs, processes, roles, and outputs.  The latter is the more abstract and grand view, while the former is critically important to helping us understand the actual human workflows that exist today and will tomorrow because the software workflows are constantly and rapidly innovating and changing.

Software workflows are very fun to define, create, implement and realize.  Making software is a thrilling and fun experience.  Adding a set of systems or softwares together into an information systems happens frequently and creates greater value to human workflows.

Human workflows are abstract views of our organizations and systems and first focus on the actual people in terms of their roles, what artifacts they create and pass around, what processes and tasks they perform, how they measure their work, how they define flow, and a variety of other things.  Human workflows are critical to know and understand for organizations to be focused on the customer, value, efficiency and sales.

Overall, between these two methods of workflow definition, we can understand our organizations and their related complexities.  There are tools out there like Configuration Management Databases and Windows Workflow Foundation to map the software workflows and IDS Scheer ARIS to map the human interaction workflows.  Together we can use these information systems to store data about our organizations and get  better information out about what is going on as analysts and decision makers.

Name the project

Even kids know how to tell us what to do.
In organizations we become followers.
But don't.  Be perceptive and share it.

Between all the clutter and crap of organizations there is a project somewhere.  You are the person that has to identify and name these projects.  Without you, there are no projects, just chaos and disorder.  Get good at finding, naming, and talking about projects and what they are.  Get good at telling people about them, getting them excited about them and helping them understand how they can help the project succeed.  Don't be martyr or fall guy for the project but continue to represent and be clear with people on it and the way forward, to a better place.

Bosses failing and who the hell's God anyways?

You don't want your bosses or organization to fail.  It's no good.  Sometimes (always) we're put into organizations where we can't control the outcome.  Arguably, unless we're on top of our organizations, we have almost no control.  We might be able to control our system or process or area but if we're not controlling the whole thing (and what would the whole thing even be?!), the organization (and us with it) might be failing.

Managing context and our situation to the best of our ability is critical and sometimes we have almost no choice but to do this.  We have the option to influence and partner with the people above us but that might not be enough sometimes.  Probably the best thing we can do is to control our own organizations and try to lead more of them.  But even then, there's probably no organization without a context unless that's God.  It's definitely not you or anything you can think of!!

Teams can grow without increasing in count

Grow, baby, grow.
(Just don't necessarily multiply, please.)

Growth is a funny thing.  It can happen in your mind or in the physical world.  Growth can be seen as in increase in a population: it can be seen as an increase or improvement in anything.

I made the point to a colleague yesterday that our team can grow even if we don't add people to it.  It sounded profound to me and he agreed.

What I meant by this was that the thing that matters more than anything that our team (regardless of its size or members) grows and learns and improves.  It would be nice if it grew in terms of count and influence but that is not my current need or expectation.  I am trying to do just the basic things and make sure we have a plan and are tracking.

Team-building is difficult but can be extremely fun and rewarding.  Growing in any way positive is a great goal but we have to remember that we have to control growth as well.

Control is a challenging part of growth.  You don't want to grow too fast because it is painful.  You don't want to grow uncontrollably because it is scary.  You want to grow 'just enough' so that you are meeting your objectives and doing the right things.  You want to fit and be the right size within your environment.  You don't want to get too big and consume too many resources: this is not sustainable.

So next time you consider growing a team, or anything for that matter, consider that you might already have enough and that it is internal reflection, collaboration, and communication between the existing organism that needs to grow.

Developing the Right Metrics Matters the Most

There are several ways a person could view an organization:

• As a collection of business processes (activities) that the business has to perform to meet its strategic objectives
• As a collection of IT applications that support the processes
• As a collection of people and suppliers who provide the resources necessary to achieve the organizational objectives
• As a collection of metrics or measures that describe the performance of the organization

Although each of these perspectives is equally real, only one is RIGHT in my opinion. Which one? METRICS, I say. Unless we boil our organizations into numbers and shared things that people can understand -- not complex and changing things like systems, processes, tools, and people -- can we really manage our organization as a program. I'm not making an argument for ACCOUNTING, per se, I'm talking about those facts and figures that tell us whether or not our business is being successful at achieving its objectives.

Therefore, it's my contention that a key part of the strategic planning and communications processes is to define and communicate about the key performance indicators (KPIs) of your business. KPIs are a bit of a cliche term but they're critical. The fundamental question we have to agree upon is, "How will we know that we are doing well?".

The more we develop this language of numbers and measurement, the more clear we will be together on our perception of what matters and how to allocate our resources and attention.