Levels of confusion inconceivable in a well-managed factory are tolerated as unavoidable inside well-run marketing departments, finance groups, and R&D centers. The hit to profits is staggering, but until recently, the inherent complexity of the work in these white-collar domains made productivity breakthroughs all but impossible.
As everyone knows, solving complicated problems starts by accurately describing them. That's why newly-hired manufacturing managers often begin by drawing diagrams, called process maps, to chart the flow of material through their factories. By reducing a confusing array of machines and manufacturing steps on the shop floor to a linear sequence of symbols on a process map, the manager and his team can "see" the whole factory. Without that map, they'd have no hope of comprehending where the bottlenecks are, why inventories are so high and throughput so low.
Unfortunately, when applied to most office work, traditional process mapping has failed to deliver hoped-for productivity improvements. In fact, the conventional technique only seems to help in places like insurance claims processing facilities, where documents flow through a linear sequence of steps much as materials flow through a factory.
But the fastest growing and highest cost sector of the white-collar economy isn't characterized by repetitive, linear work flows. Whether a company makes its living by installing computer networks, organizing trade shows, or designing electronic components, work gets done through a complex web of interactions among highly skilled workers. And in an age of increasing customization, the path through that web rarely repeats itself. Nonetheless, an organization's productivity (and profits) hinge on its ability to coordinate interactions among dozens, if not hundreds, of knowledge workers.
Without a way of sketching out how work flows through such fluid, cross-functional organizations, it's impossible for those involved to create a shared mental map of their work process. Everyone knows their immediate responsibilities, but no one can see all the steps or how they fit together. Organizational learning -- applying the lessons of past experience to boost future productivity -- is stymied. "Reinventing the wheel" is the norm not the exception.
Long before this dilemma reared its ugly head as a major block to productivity, Fernando Flores and Terry Winograd, both computer scientists at Stanford University, began thinking about how the fundamental nature of work would change in the Information Age. Over the last few years, their ideas have emerged as particularly influential. Several experts now believe that the Flores/Winograd model is becoming the de facto standard for mapping "workflow" processes in complex businesses.
Flores and Winograd contend that traditional process mapping fails to describe how work actually gets done in Information Age organizations because the technique overlooks one crucial element -- human behavior. Knowledge workers simply don't act like robots along an assembly line. In real life, people continuously negotiate with one another, juggling priorities while trying to make good on past promises. Their "to do" lists, action items, and calendars are the artifacts of promises made -- and too often broken.
As Flores and Winograd see it, an Information Age business process cannot be described as a linear information flow, but rather as a web of commitments among human beings. The basic building block of all commitment webs -- indeed the basic unit of all work -- is the person-to-person transaction. Depending upon the specific transaction, each person involved acts as a "customer" or a "performer."
Each transaction, or "workflow loop," is symbolized by a closed elliptical loop comprised of four distinct phases. In the first phase, "preparation," a request by a customer or an offer by a performer initiates the workflow. In the second, "negotiation," the customer and performer agree on the details of what constitutes success. In the third, "performance," the performer completes the task and delivers to the customer. In the fourth phase, "acceptance," the customer declares that the negotiated conditions have been met. Linked together, workflow loops form commitment webs. For example, when a salesperson answers a customer's phone call, that salesperson is the "performer" -- the person committed to providing the answer and creating customer satisfaction. But if that salesperson can't answer a tough question and has to call technical support, she becomes the internal "customer" and the support representative who handles her call is the "performer." If the topic is particularly obscure, that support rep might in turn become the "customer" of yet another "performer," perhaps, an engineer over in product development.
Each workflow loop serves one purpose -- to satisfy the "customer." In the case of the tough technical question, creating customer satisfaction triggered a cascading series of nested workflow loops. But had the salesperson known the answer, none of the subsidiary workflows would have been launched. The sequence of work steps, the people involved, the cycle time and the cost depended on the specific content and circumstances of the work being done.
No matter how complex a business process gets, it can be mapped out as a web of linked workflow loops. Just as conventional process mapping helps factory personnel comprehend their world, the Flores/Winograd technique allows knowledge workers to see how their work system fits together. Mapping identifies the redundant, broken, and missing feedback loops that cause duplication, delay, and confusion.
In 1983, Flores and Winograd founded Action Technologies, Inc. (ATI) of Alameda, CA, to turn their concepts into software. ATI's software allows analysts to build and refine graphical workflow maps on-screen. It then converts these maps into network-based systems that route work through the organization, automatically generating individual "to do" lists, reminders, and reports on project cost and cycle time. With the recent emergence of large PC networks and groupware products like Lotus Notes, ATI is beginning to find a broad market for its ActionWorkFlow products.
"Early adopters of Lotus Notes now realize they need to fundamentally rethink their business processes if they're going to tap its full power," says James Collier, Director, Notes Application Development at Lotus Development Corporation in Cambridge, MA. "When it comes to workflow, it's not just a matter of bringing up another piece of software on the network. A company's whole mindset must change to appreciate the value that workflow provides. Few companies are that far along yet."
But scattered reports from firms that have implemented ATI's workflow system report significant advances in productivity. The San Francisco office of Young & Rubicam, the big advertising agency, deployed a Lotus Notes version of ActionWorkFlow to redesign their approach to creating advertising campaigns. Within months, the firm reported dramatic decreases in overtime hours, rush charges, and rework as well as shorter cycle times and enhanced client satisfaction. "ActionWorkFlow allows the group to see that there was in fact a core set of interactions," says Nicholas Rudd, Y&R's Chief Information Officer, "It's not all chaotic."
Microsoft selected ATI's software to help it redesign and manage its order entry system. According to Dan Santell, formerly of Andersen Consulting, and leader of the team that implemented the ATI system, "No other approach to process mapping is as powerful."
From a bionomic perspective, the growing acceptance of Flores/Winograd workflow model marks another step in an accelerating shift in management thinking -- from "organization as simple, stable machine" to "organization as complex, evolving organism." In both biology and business, understanding how things actually work begins by mapping the webs of nested feedback loops that link cells into organisms and workers into organizations.