I’ve been doing a lot of intranet/portal governance work lately. It reminds me how important process analysis skills are for the communication professional. How many times have you been asked to “fix” a situation with communication, only to realize it is actually a broken business process that is the culprit?
When you set out to analyze a process, there are two steps to take first:
- Identify the start of the process
- Identify the end of the process, either where all activity stops or where another process takes over
Sounds simple, but the second one is sometimes challenging to determine. Once you’ve identified these, you can map the functions involved, what they are supposed to do and at what stage. Then, there are several key questions to ask yourself:
- How many different things can be in the process flow at one time (e.g., how many different pieces of content can be in the approval process at one time)? To find the answer, it is usually best to ask this question for each individual step in the process. Different steps may have different capacities.
- Where are the bottlenecks? Look for places where the process slows down or becomes less efficient.
- What is the cause of the bottleneck? Look for underlying causes such as inadequate information, availability of people, or people assigned to the wrong role.
- What can be done to eliminate the bottlenecks?
- What other people, processes, or groups depend upon this process?
These questions help you identify solutions and figure out how important the process is based on who relies on the process. If your organization has people dedicated to process improvement, try to spend some time learning from them. Process skills will be very useful in your communication career.
Stacy Wilson, ABC, is president of Eloquor Consulting, Inc., in Lakewood, Colorado
