‘People and Process’ — in sixty seconds
To complete even the simplest task, businesses need to deploy a mix of:
- People,
- Process and
- Technology
in order to achieve the desired result.
- Technology can be complex or simple: a computer, a lathe, a phone, a desk.
- The Process is about how the technology is used: processes may be set down in a user manual or as verbally-passed-on guidelines.
- The People issues consider motivation, morale, skills and so on.
So ... a business task: Answering the Phone ...
The technology certainly includes the phone.
The process is about how quickly the phone is answered, when in the day, with what greeting, how calls are relayed and so on.
People issues are around skills and knowhow, but importantly about motivation — why bother to answer the phone at all ? — and about achieving the aims that the business seeks.
Far too often it’s Technology that drives the Process-and-People issues. That way:
- People fight both the process and the technology:
none of the three works properly - Processes are less than ideal
- The investment in both Technology and People
is undermined - Customers and the business suffer
I have spent over twenty years working across the planet and in almost every industry, building processes that work and engaging people and teams so they work effectively with the tools available to them.
My expertise has been gained from work in areas as diverse as:
- Car marketing in Germany
- Rat-catching in Wales
- Financial services in the City of London
- Tea production in Malaŵi
- Grocery retailing across the UK
- Oil production and marketing from Pakistan to Chile
And in all that diversity, the same issues return:
- Businesses need to attract customers and keep them happy so they come back and recommend
- People need to communicate effectively, and that starts with listening carefully
- There’s no point trying to fix symptoms: go for the causes
- People instinctively resist change: they’ll always seek to do things the way they’ve always done them
- Technology only delivers on its promises if the people in the business are engaged first
You can read more about my industrial experience in the pages reached through the navigation panel to the left of this page.