Finding change with time lapse video and whacking bottlenecks

Process improvement lies at the heart of change-making—any job that your customers or your business repeat is an opportunity for efficiency. The gold dust lies in finding the next best opportunity.

Take, for example, this experience familiar to many.

If, like me, you travel often, the mood of your trip can depend on your airport experience. To pass the time in line, I like to think about new ways to solve the problem. The longer the line, the more time to think.

It’s everyone’s goal to get from the airport entrance to the gate as quickly as possible without skimping on the necessary security precautions. No one —traveller, airport staff, or immigration officer—benefits from long lines.

So how come there’s a perennial challenge in getting all prebooked passengers through the process. (Sure, Nexus helps some of us, but that is a benefit of exclusivity, confined to a few travellers. And Nexus has a bottleneck—can you guess what it is?)

This problem is an example of two things that apply to any activity—complex change and process efficiency.

It’s easy to stand and watch people go through the process and point out steps that could be made more efficient. Why do we have to key in our passport information multiple times? Why do we need to show our passports to 5 people? Why do we even need passports when more secure means of identification have been available for years.

The technology exists for us to checkin before we leave home, validate our identity with biometrics, and predict when passenger loads call for the scheduling of additional immigration staff.

It’s a perfect example of the majority of cases where the technology is the easy part. What’s hard is making the change happen. Coordinating action across the multiple participating organizations (airline bookings, airport services and immigration services), sharing data (securely) between the multitude of systems involved, and aligning with each party’s priorities.

Process efficiency is all about removing unnecessary steps and moving bottlenecks. Every process will always have one bottleneck. Connect the bottlenecks and you’ve found the critical path that will dictate the time it takes for every individual to get from start to finish.

There’s little point in having sub-second passport verification if less than half the immigration desks have been staffed. Unless you consider the process of refinement (excuse me getting meta here, but continuous process improvement is .. a process itself).

Imagine reviewing a days worth of time lapse video.

If there are four places we can line up (entry, security. Immigration and gate), it’s pretty easy to see where the next improvement will have the greatest impact.

You can apply this principle to anything you do that takes more than one step. Getting your chores done at home, filling the dishwasher, cutting the lawn, emptying the dishwasher, et al. And at work, selling, manufacturing, delivering, and addressing customer concerns.

Better processes kill waste and lower frustration. And that generally improves people's lives.

If that’s obvious, I assume you’re either continually optimizing your awareness to happy customer process. Or you’re just about to start.

What’s the bottleneck in your improvement process?

Congratulations if you’ve figured out one or two point-fixes (think passport scans) that streamline one steps in the process. But if customers aren’t seeing the full end-to-end benefit, there are other delays. Just like the sub-second passport scan, the benefit is lost unless the downstream process chain can take advantage of that win.

You need to be relentless. Here's how:

1. Focus on inputs and outcomes only—that is, the start and end of the process.

2. Know what’s going on inside (your metaphorical time lapse video). If, like the airport line, the process is visible, you can identify bottlenecks through observation. If the process cannot be readily watched, you can introduce digital tracking to make progress visible.

3. Whacking the next bottleneck mole that pops up.

4. Don’t stop until you’re happy with the end-to-end timing.

If you’re trying to make change happen across organizations, or entire markets, you get extra browny points for bravery. In complex systems that cross multiple organizations and interests groups, you have to place your little piece in context of the whole. And you need friends with shared goals up and down the line.

Only then will everyone see the benefit.

GTG—I’ve reached front of the line … but be sure to connect with me at graham@primeFusion.caand we can discuss your bottlenecks and ways to address them.