When I improve a process, I want it still running six months later, so the effort does not dissolve the moment I move on.

Job context

Who

An operator running several improvement projects at once

When

Some months after an improvement lands

Trigger

Returning to a fixed process and finding it back as it was

Situation

Improvements survive on attention, and attention moves

Constraints

Does not manage the doers and does not stay with one process

5 Pains

• The old way existed for an unstated reason

  High

  The new design drops an edge case only the doer knew about.

  Root cause: A step's reason is not recorded alongside the step

• Nobody owns the process after the project ends

  High

  A project has an owner; a process does not.

  Root cause: Organisations are arranged by function while processes run across them

• Improvement adds work for the front line

  High

  The benefit lands elsewhere while the effort lands on them.

  Root cause: Designers measure the total benefit; doers bear the local cost

• No way to notice a process has drifted

  Medium

  Drift is gradual and produces no event to detect.

  Root cause: Nobody re-measures a process once it is considered fixed

• The next person does not know why it is done this way

  Medium

  Reasons travel with people, and people move on.

  Root cause: Process knowledge lives in memory rather than in documents

5 Desired Outcomes

• Know the reason behind each step before changing it

  Functional

• Have an owner for the process after the project

  Social

• The doers benefit from the improvement itself

  Social

• Detect drift as it starts

  Functional

• See their work still standing months later

  Emotional

5 Existing Solutions

A solution is not the same thing as a product — a customer can hire a behaviour or a workaround too.

• Standard operating procedures

  Product

  Records the how and rarely the why, so the next redesign drops the same edge case.

• Name a process owner

  Service

  The right mechanism, adding a role no org chart contains.

• Re-measure on a schedule

  Behaviour

  The only way to catch drift, producing nothing reportable.

• Write the reason beside each step

  Workaround

  Operators build the process's memory because the standard template has no room for it.

• Have the front line design their own step

  Behaviour

  The only way improvements stick, and far slower than designing it yourself.

2 Opportunity Gaps

• Projects have owners and departments have owners; the process running across them belongs to nobody.

  Why existing solutions fail: Org charts have boxes for functions, and anything running across boxes has no box to live in.

  Potential opportunity: Attaching process ownership to an end-to-end metric, giving it an owner without needing a new box.

• Improvement demands extra effort at the front line while the benefit lands in a metric further up.

  Why existing solutions fail: Improvement projects are approved on total benefit, and no step in the approval asks who does the extra work.

  Potential opportunity: Requiring each improvement to state what it removes for the doer, not only what it adds.