CHALLENGE & TOOL SELECTION

My goal was to streamline a process that included several departments of the company  including After-Sales (Customer Care), Tech Support, Reverse Logistics, Accounting and  Finance. For many years this process had been broken and all the groups were constantly  pointing fingers to each other, saying that the process was broken because of the other teams  and not recognizing their own role in the end-to-end process. As no one was recognizing  opportunities in its own part of the process, there was no assertive communication amongst  the teams and the end-to-end process disconnections were increasing year after year, causing  a bad experience to the company’s customers.

Our challenge was to define common ground so we could really understand our “what is” and  have a clear view of what success would look like. For that, we needed to start creating  empathy amongst the different groups, helping them to see themselves into the process. This  would allow the representatives of the different team to identify what changes they could do  in their own part to contribute to the process as a whole at the same time that they would be  able to clearly communicate to the other teams what was expected from the others so their  own process could be more efficient.

I needed to find a tool that would help me to create empathy and establish common ground  for collaboration amongst the 5 different departments involved. The tool I chose was  visualization. As explained in the “Visualization Tool” video, in week 1, this is a tool that can be  used in different phases of the Design Thinking process, and that has as it mains characteristic  the use of images to help to make problems tangible and concrete. In this case, I started with  an existing cross-functional process map that already existed to help the representatives of  each of the 5 areas, all with different mind-sets and perspectives, to see the cross-functional  process we wanted to improve through the same perspective. The goal was that by the end of  the exercise each group could understand the other’s job, how their own job was impacting in  the job of the others, and identify which changes in their own job or other’s would help to  improve the end-to-end process.

APPLICATION

I invited representatives of the 5 different teams, with knowledge enough to represent their  department, to participate of a 3-hours long working session. I started putting in the wall an  already existing process map that showed the high level steps of the process showing the area  responsible for each step and I explained that our goal in this session was to learn about each  other’s job, so we could all be in common ground and as a group understand our current  situation (“What is?”).

Our procedure would be: the area responsible for the first activity would explain their inputs,  the area’s task, the way they do it, and what they delivered as output for the area responsible  for the following step of the process. We would follow this procedure step-by-step, each area  providing details of the steps under their responsibility, covering the 13 steps involved from  the beginning to the end of the process. While one team was presenting, the role of the others  was listening carefully, asking questions for a better understanding of the job that was being  presented and asking “why not” for alternative ideas that could come up. During this time, my  role was two-folded: to add, change or delete steps in the map we were seeing in the wall so it  would better represent the “as is” process that the areas were presenting; and also take notes  of the points that were being perceived/commented as process opportunities so we could  come back to it in a following section.

By the end of the session, all the persons in the room were able to understand the other  team’s participation in the process and also to have a comprehensive view of the end-to-end  process, what allowed them to see how their own job was impacting the other team’s job.  Everyone also had insights about things they could do differently in their own job to facilitate  the job of the other teams involved. This understanding of how everything is linked created  empathy and the willingness to engage in productive conversation with the other groups on  ways to improve the process and maximize the productivity, preparing the ground for the next  steps of the project.

INSIGHTS & APPROACH

My main insights were:

1) Starting with an existing process map instead of creating an image from its very

beginning was critical for the success of the activity. On one-hand, by seeing their  own processes in the wall, everybody felt that they were part of something bigger; on  the other, seeing that there was a lot to cover and being able to see what steps were  already covered and what we would still need to cover helped the group to avoid  going into unnecessary details, maintaining the conversation focused in what matters  the most, to ensure that we would be able to have a high-level understanding of  everything until the end of the session.

2) The tool delivered more results than expected in terms of empathy creation and

alignment. It not only created a common ground for the following sessions of the  project as it also created new communication channels between areas that weren’t  talking regularly before the session. Customer Care and Tech Support teams, for  example, realized they had a similar task but each of the groups was doing it in a  different way and then they decided to have separate conversations to streamline that  specific part of the process.

3) Deciding to take notes of the points identified as opportunities but not jumping into

its details during the session was very important for the success of the session. If we  had stopped each time an opportunity was identified, we would have not be able to  cover all the steps; ignoring the opportunities that were being pointed out would  make participants feel that the opportunities they were seeing were not important.  With the list we were able to cover the full agenda while also showing that the inputs  were important and that they would be covered later.

Seeing the results of this session I learned that the impact of a discussion using visualization go  beyond the specific project you are working on. When you establish an environment where  people feel that they are being listened and that other people now understand what they do,  the empathy created stimulates collaboration in other activities and projects resulting in an  overall improvement of the results. For this reason I have been using the visualization tool not  only as a problem solving tool, but also as a way to increase productivity: the members of my  team now regularly share visually what they are doing to get contribution from the other team  members so it can get improved.

