Navigating the path to Future Growth
Always start with the end goal in mind!
Road Map definition: A detailed plan to guide progress toward a goal
Always start a roadmap with the end goal in mind! This is crucial for capturing a successful end-to-end process. In this article I share a standard approach I take with all stakeholders involved in a process to keep us honest and guide us to a future growth path. Each step of the way is sprinkled with Change Management and Knowledge because every step is as important as the next. Here is the high level road map and down below you’ll see more details:
Pre-kick off meeting
Kick-Off meeting
Process Workshops
Procedure Workshops
Governance Workshops
Results
Feedback Session
Off-Board
The Details
Pre-kick off meeting: During a pre-kick off meeting, I ensure I am meeting with decision makers and stakeholders that will sponsor and advocate the work that we are about to embark on. This time is important because I am able to ask 1) Who are my main players in the process, 2) Who are the ones I should meet with, 3) Understand what the culture looks like, 4) and anything else I should be made aware of before reaching out to everyone involved. This can take more than just one meeting because I want to ensure I am building trust and relationships as I’ve talked about before in Relationship Building Through Interviews. In addition to this, I go through this pre-planned road map with the decision makers to ensure they are aware of what this process is going to look like (the process to the process) and to get their input into what I should modify! Always staying flexible and always being ready to pivot.
Kick-Off meeting: These meetings can vary. Depending on the information gathered from the pre-kick off, I will either meet with people individually, meet with different teams across different departments, and/or meet with everyone at once. During this meeting I go over the context of what is in scope and how the workshops are structured. I also go over alignment of definitions, document organization, and get a mutual understanding of who my brain trust is (roles and responsibilities).
Process Workshops: This is the time to squeeze all the juice in a process! First I meet with individual stakeholders to capture their perspective on how the process works and move down the line with each role of the step. During these workshops, I also find that many resources that already exist are brought to life. In this case it is simply a matter of understanding where those resources fit into the process, adding them in the right places, and keeping track of the links.
Procedure Workshops: Once the high level process is captured, I go back to the first person I talked to in the first step and start capturing the details of that step. During these detailed workshops, I deep-dive into each procedure with relevant SMEs and ask about their day to day activities, how they use the tools they use, who are the people they hold conversations with. Last but not least, adding the links of the resources to a tracker for maintenance.
Governance Workshops Governance is often overlooked and it is important to keep this moving because once it becomes urgent, nothing has been maintained and the work that should’ve been done a long time ago has to be reactive instead of proactive. What governance entails is: a) Keeping track of documentation (links), b) Defining cadences, c) Maintaining documents evergreen based on the set cadences.
Results: During these sessions, I go over the following information:
What to do with the new knowledge
How many handoffs there are
How many people are involved in the process
How much time each activity/procedure takes to complete
How much time will be saved by using the new process document
How much money the company will save in a year
Feedback Session Closer to the end, I hold a feedback session because it is important to me to understand what worked, what did not, and what can be improved. Since feedback is so important, I do ask for active feedback throughout stages of the roadmap above.
Off-Board Finally, off-boarding means providing the final tools and ensuring that the stakeholders understand how to continue using and governing their resources.
It is important to note that even though this is my standard way to follow a roadmap, every process and project is different, so it is important to be flexible and pivot as necessary!
At the end of the day, the stakeholders can now assess their future growth path and think about automating their process, where there can be more efficiencies, having better training, moving their processes to a new system, and more (I’ll leave this one for another blog).
