[What stood out to me is] that people are predominantly scanning documents to get rid of paper file cabinets and archives – they’re scanning documents that are already “dead.”

Unfortunately, the real value from document scanning comes from those documents that are very much “alive” and that require action. About 57% of respondents identified “improve process throughput (productivity)” as an important business driver for document capture.

Yet, in reality only 37% of survey respondents are scanning over half of their inbound documents. Of those scanned documents, 57% are passed to archive rather than a business process.

Chalef is correct in that the advantages of digitizing paper is far greater with documents you are actually using. After all, if you’re scanning documents just to place them in an archive, you probably hope to never have to retrieve that data.

However, taking an active business process paperless can be incredibly difficult.  That’s because you’re asking stakeholders to make as many as three changes:

1. Acknowledge that the way you are working now can be characterized as a rigorous, well-defined procedure.
2. Trust that the proposed system will work at least as well as the way you are doing it now.
3. Learn and utilize the new approach and deal with any eccentricities that appear.

Unfortunately, many  improvement efforts try to force all three at the same time by issuing an order from above. What often happens, as Daniel Chalef notes, is a compromise. Instead of implementing a comprehensive document management system and resulting in dramatic productivity increases, the company ends up with a small change that is largely ignored.

These concepts don’t just apply to scanning systems. The reason business improvement is hard is because we often start with technology instead of with people. We should begin by empowering stakeholders, not forcing them to change. To learn more, contact Slaughter Development today!

Also seen on Dilbert’s official website, below is Scott Adams’ latest creation:

Obviously, judging by standards of professionalism, “playing dumb” is hardly a reputable—let alone believable—scapegoat in business. And though this comic strip may seem overly far-fetched, there is a hint of truth behind it. Perhaps in not such an extreme manner as seen above, but surely there have been situations in business where a lack of acknowledgment, understanding, accountability or honesty have jeopardized an entire company, a management team or even a single employee.

As ironic as it sounds, discovering failure should not be embarrassing. On the contrary, acknowledging its existence is commendable. Admitting to mistakes prior to implementation not only presents the opportunity to highlight ethical traits such as diligence, humility and forthrightness, but its simply the logical thing to do. After all, isn’t it better for everyone involved if the problem is rectified before it turns into an even bigger mess? If nothing less, it would certainly prevent the hot water that the employee is standing in from boiling over.

Allowing problems to spiral out of control in the office is more than just irresponsible. It can be expensive, contagious or even hazardous.  Don’t allow fear of failure to create problems in your office. Instead, contact Slaughter Development to learn more about using metawork to improve workflow at your business.

Wednesday’s presentation acknowledges the existing reputation unproductive meetings have, but speaks moreso about the progression of concepts that can be just the right way to create successful, efficient meetings.  Take a look and see what improvement suggestions were made (direct link):

Besides the usual complaints that meetings are just too long and waste too much time, there are other factors that affect a meeting’s environment such as forced collaboration, lack of agenda or direction, power struggles, absence of a plan or outcome, and stress derived from loss of productiveness. Experiencing one or a combination of these issues in a meeting is the reason why it fails. Yet, as was presented on Wednesday, identifying types of meetings and the ways in which they fail can assist in determining not only their value, but can help highlight tools for making them worthwhile.

A good rule of thumb when calling a meeting should be to ask yourself the question, “what is the purpose?” If it is something other than brainstorming ideas or making decisions, then its time to rethink the meeting altogether. After all, time wasted equivalates to more than just wasted money. It can result in loss of direction, creativity or even motivation; three areas that empower stakeholders and assist in achieving productivity and innovation.

The next program in the Productivity Series is Introduction to Workflow Diagrams. The event takes place Wednesday, April 7th at 2:00PM. Register today!

In basketball, the fans are often considered the Sixth Man.  In your business, Marketing is the “sixth man”. Would you hire an employee without a specific idea of what you wanted the employee to do?  Of course not. As a business owner, when you hire someone you want them to be productive.  Likewise, in order to put them on the right track you outline things such as goals, objectives, and performance so you and your employee know what is expected and how success will be measured. 

For many firms, the investment in marketing exceeds the salary you pay a single employee. If you are going to make that type of an investment, I think you need to have some clarity regarding performance objectives and success measures.

So where do you start?  

Just as you would with an employee, begin with your business objectives.  How many customers or sales do you hope to generate as a result of the investment?   Understanding what a single customer is worth will help you match the appropriate investment to a particular marketing activity. Then at the end of the program, campaign or promotion you can evaluate if the money was well spent. Calculating the ROI per customer can provide a helpful starting point for your budgeting process.

Compare Marketing Activities

Hold your marketing accountable.  Those activities which produce better results, such as more qualified prospects or simply more prospects in general, should get promoted while the investments directed toward similar programs should increase.  Those activities which don’t produce results risk being fired!  

Just as business owners will disagree on what qualities make up the perfect employee, they will disagree on what marketing is most effective.  Set your own criteria and measurements and you will enjoy a winning season!

Lorraine Ball is President of Roundpeg, a full service marketing firm in Indianapolis’ small business community. Visit them online at www.roundpeg.biz.

Why are we showing off  an old rotary telephone used for text entry on The Methodology Blog? It’s not because this is a brilliant idea that you should try at your own office. Rather, the hack is a good example of lateral thinking. Instead of creating something to increase productivity, this little invention actually decreases productivity.

Figuring out how to do the opposite of what you want sometimes helps to put the problem in clearer perspective. This might be good evidence that what you need instead is something like the following:

At Slaughter Development, we work to encourage clients to think in all directions. If you’re struggling to come up with ways to become more productive, try thinking of ways to become less productive. Great business processes arise when we are open to every possibility. Contact us today to learn more!

Interested in how doing it wrong can lead to doing it right? Watch for our forthcoming book, Failure: The Secret to Success,  coming out this Spring!

Every time Slaughter Development analyst Ashley Lee walks into the gym with her two children, two processes occur. First, the receptionist at the front desk scans her card. Second, she is handed a long, red tag entitled “Kids Zone.” Having never been told what to do with the tag, Ashley simply accepts it, heads to the children’s daycare and leaves it on the countertop.

Curious as to why the daycare attendants never ask for the red tag, Ashley questioned its existence this week.

Ashley: Excuse me, may I ask what this red tag is for?

Daycare Attendant: You know, I actually have no idea.

Ashley: Really? It doesn’t serve a purpose?

Daycare Attendant: Well, I figure its to show us that you have a family membership at the gym. Really though, none of us were told what its actually for.

Since little was known about it, Ashley proceeded to the front desk to ask the receptionist. Upon her arrival, she found the manager there instead.

Ashley: May I ask why I’m given a red tag every time I enter the gym?

Manager: The red tag symbolizes that you have a family membership.

Ashley: So bringing the tag to the daycare proves to the attendants that we’re paying for the service?

Manager: Well, sort of. Really, its not up to the daycare attendants to determine that. The front desk attendant is supposed to check your profile on the computer after scanning your card. They give you the red tag to confirm that you are paying for the membership.

Ashley: But, if the receptionist knows I’m paying for the membership and the daycare attendants aren’t responsible for knowing, why the red tag? Isn’t it kind of useless?

Manager: Pretty much.

All in all, Ashley ended her investigation with one conclusion: the process of the red tag has zero significance.

Be wary of any process that leaves a false impression of purpose. If its left unquestioned or goes unexplained, all that’s created—besides confusion—is incompetence among stakeholders. Submitting to a transparent, misdirected process is more than just wasteful. Its frustrating. After all, doesn’t that useless process increase costs to the customer?

To learn how Slaughter Development can help companies overcome processes that leave stakeholders running in circles, contact us today. We’ll do more than just provide a  fluid solution. We’ll assist in creating a purposeful and productive pathway for process success.

A press release offers some highlights:

“What the process manager does is it lets our customers automate these business processes by simply drawing that process just as you’d draw a process on a white board,” said Ariel Kelman, vice president of marketing for Force.com at Salesforce.com.  ”Our cloud computing platform will instantly run that process in the cloud.”

“Someone who doesn’t know how to write code can build sophisticated business applications,” through Visual Process Manager, which actually generates metadata.

That’s a pretty tall order, and customers should be aware that there’s far more to designing business processes than just doodling a whiteboard. As The Methodology Blog has noted before, business process modeling can be aided by software, but most companies need to adopt a process-centric perspective before diving into this solution.

However, SalesForce should be heralded for taking this step. Existing customers of their award-winning products will undoubtedly be introduced to visual process design, paving the way for companies to focus more on developing intelligent workflows based on diagrams.

In either case, however, your organization can likely benefit from learning how to design visual workflows. The whiteboard is the place to start. For more, check out Slaughter Development’s Business Process Modeling offering. We’d love to help you improve productivity and satisfaction at work.

Here’s an excerpt from the full essay:

The satisfaction derived from work is more than just momentary bliss. Satisfaction is an essential component of productivity. Many studies have shown that people who are most effective at work enjoy much of what they do. Happiness might not sound like a practical employee objective, but it’s an outcome that has tremendous power.

For more information about how stakeholder happiness can impact your business, contact Slaughter Development today.

For these reasons, people and animals who have an appetite for becoming an alpha often settle contentedly into life as a beta. “The desire to be in a high position is universal,” says de Waal. “But that trait has co-evolved with another skill–the skill to make the best of lower positions.”

Humans not only make peace with their beta roles but they also make money from them. Among corporations, an increasingly well-rewarded portion of the workforce is made up of B players, managers and professionals somewhere below the top tier. They don’t do the power lunching and ribbon cutting but instead perform the highly skilled, everyday work of making the company run. As skeptical shareholders look ever more askance at overpaid corporate A-listers, the B players are becoming more highly valued. It’s an adaptation that serves the needs of both the corporation and the culture around it. “Everyone has ambition,” says Lowe. “Societies have to provide alternative ways for people to achieve.”

It’s possible to be productive and satisfied without being at the top. Every team needs a quarterback, certainly, but they also need specialized players in all of the positions. All jobs are important. The question is whether or not the people in those jobs are empowered to the work that job deserves.

At Slaughter Development, we don’t really want to meet owners of companies to talk about productivity and workflow. That might sound counterintuitive, because the usual thought is that organizations becomes more effective from the top down. In reality, it is the every day, mid-level and front-line employees which have the most impact on efficiency and effectiveness. The people doing the work are the people we want to meet.

If you recognize the opportunity to make improvements at your company or non-profit, consider reaching out to Slaughter Development for a complementary 15-minute Productivity Short Talk during your next staff meeting.  We’d love to support your ambition by speaking to your team on a topic of your choice. Contact us today!

There’s no need to prove the second part of that statement—everyone knows that unemployment is high and finding a position is tough. But a recent survey shows that in one industry, people despise their current job more  than ever:

[The] survey found that the willingness of IT employees to “exert high levels of discretionary effort” — put in extra hours to solve a problem, make suggestions for improving processes, and generally seek to play a key role in an organization — has plummeted to its lowest levels since the survey was launched 10 years ago.

In 2007, about 12% of the IT employees fit in category of “highly engaged” workers, but that has since fallen to 4%.

These are literally the most critical employees,” said Jaime Capella, a managing director in [survey company] CEB’s information technology practice. Moreover, such critical workers are 2.5 times more likely than the average employee to be looking for new opportunities.

Although the data from this study is fairly dire, the language used in the story is equally concerning. That first paragraph seems to imply that employees ought to be willing to “put in extra hours.” Yet, shouldn’t we characterize these unusual situations not as a sign of engagement but a failure of management?

Likewise, the drop of “highly engaged” workers from 12% to 4% ought to upset any business owner. Does that mean almost all of the people we hire are not “highly engaged” to begin with, or does their level of engagement start to drop after the interview?

It might seem bold, but don’t we want to strive to have all our employees ”highly engaged” while expecting none of them to work overtime?  And in a tight economy, can’t we afford to let people go who aren’t committed to the organization?

These are hard questions and can’t be answered in a single blog post. But in general, we cannot just focus on job satisfaction. We have to instead study the connection between satisfaction and productivity.

If you’re struggling to engage employees, consider reaching out to Slaughter Development. We’ll help you figure out how to empower employees to be productive so they enjoy work and achieve more without the fear of being swallowed by the troubled economy.