Challenge & Selection

I am working for an international chemical company, as sales coordinator, our main task is increase  sales but our bigger challenge is to improve the coordination for all activities of the stakeholders  (production, marketing, supply chain, technology, legal sales resp. customers, distributors, logistic,  etc….) within the larger organization and departments, we are kind of interfaces and decisions  approvers. Like in every large company, one of the most consuming energy and killer motivation is  complexity in processes. Process are supposed to help improve efficiency but they can quickly get out  of control, I am very lucky to be part of a very diversity team and I love the change to work in a very  international environment but so many different cultures dealing with so many complex process and  different cultural customers can lead to many intern conflicts.

I have chosen Mind Mapping tool, because I think it is a very powerful tool for a high performance  culture for a long term success, we need to take advance for the very diversity environment we are  working with, be open to new ideas and hungry for progress, our job requires paying attention to what  customers want and need but also it requires improving operation processes. This tool is the step to  stablish the criteria for generating a lots of ideas to lead to more creative solutions and transform them  into something tangible. This tool supports the process of innovation.

Application

We are struggling with lot problems, as result of a couple of different factors that happened at the  same time; productions technical problems, the biggest wave of high demand of our products, a lot of  new projects started and more… We have to learn how to deal with this new situation where our  capacities were not enough to cover the demand. This provoked a bottle neck in almost our production  lines. We focused first on putting out fires, improvising solutions to the customer needs, giving priority  to bigger customers, etc…. this situation generated a lot of extra workflow, trying to fit demand,  generating forecast and matching them with production capacities, backlogs on deliveries that have a  snow ball effect. This situation generated also a lot of intern conflict, conflicts of interest from the  different business units, market segments and also a lot of frustrations and demotivation from every  stakeholder envolved.

After collecting a lot of information and quantitative dates, and also dates about people,  about ther  feelings, their frustrations, the task and the rolls all have within the organization. We will start to use  this material to understand situation to generate solutions we need. we will go some through  workshops from all the stackeholders (15 people), the purpose of this workshops is to gain clarity about  the priorities and needs, focus on how to process all in a better way that able us to pro act quickly  instead of post acing, they have to take notes on all process and datas and note what fits what not or  what could help.  I will use some question, like what you would do if you were a programmer? How  the needs of customers will help us to make decisions? What information you think you will need to  plan the productions? How information about customer’s needs and business strategies will help you  to make decisions? What information do you need to know to know what product should be produced  first, more or reduce….? What you would do to provide a better service and optimize the production  at the same time.?

Insight and Approach

What I expect is that this helps to align the organitation around a commun understanding of the  problem and share insights and learning from the problems other are facing. I think by applying the  mind mapping our team will identify process that can be improve and what is our contribution to work  together aligning interests.

This course of desing thinking will make us to rethink the way we are working and innovate how we  frame problems in a way we are not only solving them but also it gives us an opportunity to adding  value at what we do and offer. It would trigger our intern motivation to face new situations reforce  our confidence and why not make us even better persons. What I really like is that the course invite us  to a deep reflection on how to improve in any aspect of my life. I am very thankful for giving me the  opportnitiy to re-invating my creativity

