The People, Process, & Progress Podcast - When Processes Should Adapt | S4Ep3

Episode Date: December 18, 2024

In this episode I'm helping listeners not be too rigid with their processes through examples from Taiichi Ohno and my own lessons learned as an Emergency Medical Technician, Planning Section Chief, and Project Manager.People: "Let the flow manage the processes, and not let management manage the flow." - Taiichi OhonProcess:Evaluating what done looks likeLetting the team determine the best way to get thereGauging the team's capabilitiesChoosing the right tools from the process toolboxProgress:Helping listeners not be too rigid with their processes so that their teams have autonomy and collaborative outcomes are encouraged

Have you ever felt trapped by a process, a procedure so rigid that it stifled innovation and creativity? As a new emergency medical technician, I quickly realized that the textbook protocols, while essential, couldn't always account for the unique challenges of each patient encounter. I learned to adapt these protocols to fit specific needs of the situation, ensuring optimal patient care. Later as a planning section chief, I encountered similar rigidity in traditional incident management plans and myself. And these plans and myself, while well-intentioned,

we often lack the flexibility to accommodate the unpredictable nature of emergencies, right? Instead, by collaborating with my team, we were able to develop a more adaptable approach that prioritized real-time decision-making and continuous process improvement. Now, as a leader of project managers, I look back to when I was a new project management professional and how I had to figure out how the frameworks of Agile and Waterfall provide valuable structure, but still they must be tailored to specific requirements for each project, right? And how the project management body of knowledge, the PMBOK, it offers a comprehensive way, comprehensive set of standards. It's a little less these days, but very helpful. But that real world projects often involve unexpected changes, challenges, priorities,

team environments, all that kind of stuff. So in today's People Process Progress podcast episode, I'll delve deeper into the art of adapting to a dynamic business landscape with the focus of helping you, the listener, as I was, not be too rigid in your processes. But first, please silence your cell phones, hold all sidebar conversations to a minimum, and let's get started with the People Process Progress Podcast. Three, two, one. Taichi Ono was an industrial engineer and manager at Toyota Motor Corporation. He's a huge figure in productivity in Lean Six Sigma.

If you've heard of that, that is a process improvement or an efficiency whole methodology. And he said, let the flow manage the process and not let management manage the flow. And someone that made Toyota one of the most well-known, efficient, profitable, and reliable companies in the world has to be on the right track. So how can we as project managers, project management leaders, public safety folks, or just folks that want to learn a bit more about how to use the processes they've learned but not be too rigid? Well, I think there is good to having structure among chaos. If you read any after action report from any bad thing or any failed project, there's always communication. There's always, we didn't train together. We didn't work together. I didn't know you were doing this. You didn't know I was doing that. So that comes from structure. So there is, of course, value. In the field I'm in now, project management, there is value for sure. If you're standing up a new project management office, a new structure of something, you have to have process for people to

follow, to reference themselves against. When am I supposed to document? Who am I supposed to let know? It needs to happen, but there can still be some organic growth built in there. And then also as leaders, we need to know when to let our people run and when to say, that's great. Let's see how we can work that into these standards because these are the standards that we need to use to make sure we're on track with budget organizationally. As it affects, I want to share with you that this leader learns that way, this business group benefits from this. So that's a structured way, that's a communication feedback loop that we can help each other with. So what are some recommended actions that I have learned that others have helped teach me that can help us use structure

when we're supposed to or when it benefits the team, but not be too rigid and beholden and heads down on a document when we should be looking at our team or any variation of that that you all are probably familiar with. My first thing comes from my recent this year scrum certification. And I had heard of this before, but I just love this more than kind of the waterfall. What's the charter? All that, is one, define what does done look like? And it's usually to the person that wants the project, wants the new thing, wants to host the event, is responding to the incident. Done looks like we've triaged all the patients

and we've transported them. Done looks like that we have this new system in place that makes our nurses more efficient to save them time, money, et cetera, et cetera. So it's the, we want to do this thing so that we get this output. And then as a bonus by this time or in this timeframe or before this other thing expires. And so one, we have to define what done looks like. Notice there's not a how it's what is done. When do we want it by? What is it supposed to do for us? The how we'll

figure out as a team, the how we'll empower our folks to help figure out with some guardrails as needed. The second thing is to let the team determine the best way to get these. So that's what I'm speaking to. So if you have a brand new, let's say, project manager, it's a little harder to do this because they don't know how to be a project manager. I see a lot of folks on Reddit or Facebook or other places who say, I got this cert and I got that cert, but I've never worked in it. And I say, the first thing you should do is get an internship

or apply for a job as an associate or kind of an entry level planning person that could be an emergency management or project management, because that's where you're really going to learn how to do the work. And yes, the certifications are good for resume searches and they matter later on because you have to have those to get some higher level positions. However, they are not the gold standard of what happens in the world. I did earned value spreadsheets when I was a new PMP because I was nerding out and I've never done them in five years since then. And I've had my PMP a little bit longer than that. So, so we've evaluated what done looks like. We have let the team determine the best way to get there. And the third thing that we should always be doing, even before we've, we've kind of let the team get there is if I, is gauge, what are the team's capabilities? What skills do they have? What experience do they have?

That's the technical folks. That's the operational folks, whether it's clinical or business or making widgets or whatever. And it's your team, it's your project management folks, it's your planning section folks, it's your emergency management folks, the folks that have to pull this team together to do something to make a plan to get to what done looks like. Do they have the skills from your objective assessment or not? And this is where I say objective because you could be super good buddies with this person and think, oh yeah, we'll let them do it, but they're not capable and that's not fair to them or anybody else. So that's where we have to be objective, be transparent with

ourselves and our teams and say, that's a great idea. Here's some feedback based on what I've learned. Fall into that whole, you know, John Maxwell, good leaders ask great questions. Ask those questions, balance your coaching and consulting, right? Your John Maxwell, good leaders ask great questions. Ask those questions, balance your coaching and consulting, right? Your coaching is I'm going to ask questions that help you lead yourself to the answer. Your consulting is I'm going to kind of give you the answers a little bit and then hope you get there. But you have to know what your team can do before you can give them enough room to grow, right? A blank check to just do it for someone that's new isn't fair to them either. And being too micromanaging or too prescriptive for someone that has experience also at the other end of the spectrum, not fair. The fourth thing to me that I would recommend that I've found

helpful is to choose the right tools from the process toolbox, right? And so this is where we allow the team to do things, but what are you going to use? How are we going to be transparent to see the money you've spent if you're on task, if you're on budget, if the user liked it before we get to the end? Because if we do this whole project, and this is where the whole waterfall, predictive planning, and then we get to the end and go, oh, crap, they don't like it. Where Agile helps that, where you build and test it and then get feedback and then do it again and get feedback and do it again, whatever you have to do. So you need to blend all those and pull things together. Do we need to do daily standups, which is no magic. It's a short meeting you have every day where we say, here's what we've done. Here's what we're doing. Does anybody need help have blockers as we call them, but they're extremely helpful and they open communication lines and collaboration lines. And that's where these, that one little tool plopped into a

waterfall project for a week or two when you're stuck can unstick a problem that's been happening. I didn't hear from these people. We're not getting collaboration. Well, set up daily meetings and get your leadership to endorse it. Now we all have to do it. So I think you all understand there's toolboxes, right? For fixing plumbing stuff, for carpentryry for every kind of big specialty of build and there are toolboxes for planning sporting events incident response construction projects technology projects all of these and all of those have processes that work well some and don't work well some that are too burdensome that aren't as burdensome so the end result is is team effective, or it should be what we're focused on rather, is my team effective? Are we working toward what done looks like for the benefit of

the person who we're doing this for, the organization we're doing this for, not just so that we can document a bunch of stuff that maybe no one's even looking at, right? And so, again, the recommended actions to help us kind of think to and plan toward Taichi Ochan's like not letting management manage the flow and when processes should adapt the whole title and theme of this episode is to one, evaluate what done looks like. Two, let the team determine the best way to get there. Three, as a leader, make sure you're gauging the team's capabilities so you can help keep them on the right track. And fourth, choose the right tools in the process toolbox or help your teams do that. Thank you all so much for helping by listening to the People Process Progress podcast.

Please go to peopleprocessprogress.com for more information to leave me contacts to contact me, let me know what you want to hear about more. We've got more episodes like this coming up interviews in the next year. You can follow me on Instagram and X at Pennell, P-A-N-N-E-L-L-K-G. There's also a people process progress YouTube channel that is largely fitness 15 seconds at a time, because in addition to knowing what process to adapt in the business world, we need to have good mental and physical and spiritual processes for ourselves so we show up ready for our clients, for our teammates, for our families. And that's what the YouTube channel largely is.

It's some cold plunge, some jiu-jitsu after action stuff, those kinds of things. So thank you all very much again. Stay safe and remember that hope ignites, plans guide, and action transforms. Godspeed, y'all.