The Details Matter
I speak frequently about the benefits of adopting a continuous improvement mindset and practice—so much so that the premise of my second book, The Balanced Business, is that smooth workflows create an environment that fosters organizational accountability and allows trust to flourish. There are many preconditions to the establishment of smooth workflows, but one of the most important is to create clarity about how the work gets done in your business. Improving clarity on how organizational value streams function relies on defining standard work for each team member, and mapping processes through engagement in value stream mapping events.
For today’s Muse, I’d like to focus on the definition of standard work. Although the term sounds complicated, standard work is the current best practice for a job or role in a business. Think of standard work for a role as a beefed up job description. We’ve all got job descriptions, and I challenge you to think of the last time you took any guidance from—or even looked at yours. The reason that job descriptions make their way unceremoniously to the bottom of your desk drawer and never return to see the light of day is because they don’t indicate how work is done. They are not living documents that are subject to continual scrutiny and continuous improvement. They vaguely indicate what the work is, but they don’t address the how.
Unfortunately, job descriptions have turned into compliance documents to serve the needs of the hiring managers and to help the human resources department categorize teams and communicate pay and benefits policies. Their existence gives leadership the false comfort that work has been defined, but they really just help new hires get acclimated to the organization and indicate organizational hierarchy. Neglecting to take the next step to define how work is done to best serve and support optimal flow along the businesses value streams allows for all manner of inconsistency, ad hoc ways of working, and waste to slowly infect the organization. When standard work is not defined, entropy—the natural tendency for all things to fall apart over time—is allowed to thrive, leading to broken systems, clumsy handoffs, and workflows that, well, don’t flow!
If you aren’t yet connecting with the value of standard work, think about something we’ve all done in our lives—likely on multiple occasions: following the directions that accompany an unassembled piece of furniture. I’m upgrading the lighting in my office/recording studio, and purchased rods for the room darkening curtains we’re installing. Installing curtain rods is not a difficult exercise, but it is tedious work that requires precision measurements to get the best result—especially when there aren’t studs in the wall that line up with where the rod supports are supposed to go. As a homeowner, one of the things you quickly realize is that there are never studs where you need them!
Anyway, I unpacked the two boxes of curtain rods we purchased, read the directions, and got to work preparing my workspace. Since starting my continuous improvement journey a decade or so ago, I’m constantly on the lookout for waste and ways to improve the work I’m doing—even if it’s a periodic home improvement project. As I read the directions and the list of necessary tools, I did a double-take. Hammer, level, drill, #2 Phillips screwdriver, …, wait a minute! Just a drill? What size and style of drill bit? I stopped, re-read the directions, and this critical information was nowhere to be found. I’m a homeowner with years of experience, so I know that the drill bit should be sized to accommodate the drywall anchors that came with the kit, so I did what any self-respecting DIY’er would do—I eyeballed it. Note to the uninitiated, when estimating a drill bit size, always start small. You can always enlarge a hole, but it’s practically impossible to make an oversized hole smaller!
The point of this story is that precision matters. The lack of drill bit size in the directions of the curtain rods was a minor inconvenience for me and I figured it out, but that’s only because I’d had similar experiences with poor directions and knew what to do. Now think about all the poor, unsuspecting folks who purchased the same thing I did and got it wrong. They likely spent way too much time and effort on a relatively simple job, and may have created a bigger mess than they had before they started. In almost all instances, emotional waste was generated as they cursed the manufacturer like I did. “Damn it! It’s 2024 and you still can’t create effective directions to put this crappy curtain rod together!”
The bottom line is this. If you’re serious about creating smooth workflows to improve accountability and unlock trust, then make the time to map your company’s value streams and ensure everyone has standard work documents they can use to define their work and continually improve upon it. Sometimes leaving out simple, small details can wreak the most havoc and can make the difference between smooth workflows and messy systems that drive everyone nuts.
Your customers don’t want to guess and neither do your people.
