By Ryan Staggemeier, NISC Member Value Team Lead

 When you plan a road trip, you don’t get in the car without knowing where you’re going and how you’re going to get there. You need to make sure there are places to stop for gas, a spare tire in the trunk, and that the people you’re going to see aren’t on vacation. It is also beneficial if everyone in the car knows the plan and does their part to make sure the trip is successful.

The same is true in business. When different roles and departments work together, business operations go much smoother. Unfortunately, many companies operate in silos, meaning they are focused on only their own tasks rather than working collaboratively on a big-picture goal.

“But we want experts”

By nature, there are always going to be departmental experts – billing supervisors always need to confirm the accuracy of bill cycles, engineers need to know the overall health of the distribution system and where equipment is overloaded, and line workers need to be able to prioritize safety when climbing poles and interacting with energized lines. However, when these areas are truly siloed, it prevents employees from working together and the business from reaching its full potential. For example, when a line worker knows where engineers placed breakers in the system, they can potentially isolate the area where the cause of an outage is located without them having to drive for miles trying to find it.

Understanding your organization’s workflows from start to finish is a critical step in breaking down those silos and promoting cross-departmental collaboration. That collaboration will then benefit every individual and the organization as a whole.

Charting the course makes for smoother sailing

In any organization, multiple roles need to be involved throughout one single process. It’s obvious that most of the organization is involved from start to finish on a project. However, when we talk about each step, it’s easy for employees to focus on their own individual tasks, which can lead to communication barriers between departments.

One tool that is proving extremely useful in helping employees look beyond their departments is process mapping, or recording every step of a single task or project from start to finish. Process maps are living documents that help employees in an organization understand what needs to be done, when it needs to be done, in what order, and by whom. When looking through the lens of the project as a whole, there are no departments – just a path with a beginning and an end.

Documenting each step can bring potential redundancies to light, which can often lead to increased efficiency. Process maps are also extremely beneficial in succession planning and in filling in the gaps when a key employee is out of the office for an extended period of time, such as maternity leave or short-term disability.

“But we’ve always done it this way”

When an expert outside of the department that is creating the map assists the team with process mapping, that expert can give a new perspective, potentially seeing where inefficiencies exist and where roadblocks could occur. The outside expert can also offer suggestions for newer or more efficient ways to do things. For example, employees might be entering information that another employee entered in a different application, and this is likely the way it has been done for many years. Someone with experience in process mapping and a knowledge of the business could objectively look at the entire process, spot this inefficiency, and help streamline the process, saving multiple employees hours of work and therefore saving the company a significant amount of money.

Process mapping has had such positive impacts in organizations that it is becoming somewhat of a phenomenon in business. Many companies are even creating entire departments and employing full-time staff to create and maintain the various maps and their associated analytics.

Ensuring accountability

Not having documented processes in place and accessible to employees can be detrimental to your organization. For example, if steps in an accounting process are missed, it can have legal impacts. Missing even one step in a process at an electric utility has the potential to impact the safety of its employees and customers. In an IT department, having documented processes can increase efficiency and save time by identifying who needs access to what and why rather than having to ask multiple people multiple times in multiple situations.

Even if an employee is away from the office for a minimal amount of time, such as a vacation or a sick day, other employees not having business flow access in their absence can leave processes and tasks dead in the water.

Paving the way for the next generation

Process mapping can also greatly assist an organization in effective succession planning. When longtime employees retire or leave the organization, which often happens in waves, they take years, even decades of institutional knowledge with them when they walk out the door.

While their jobs may have been second nature to them, the new employees who step in to fill their vacancies often find themselves struggling to understand the industry, the culture, and the organization as a whole on top of learning their individual jobs. Effective succession planning — which includes mentoring, training, and having an accurate process map and documentation new employees can follow — will help these new employees in all aspects of their job, setting them up for a long and successful career, which will immeasurably benefit the company as a whole.

Look outside of your tunnel

Whether you are a top distribution utility or a small utility with a handful of employees wearing multiple hats, it is extremely valuable for everyone to understand what other members of your team do every day. Simply “staying in your lane” creates tunnel vision and stops you from looking around and seeing the big picture. When employees do their daily tasks with the company’s goals in mind, the business will almost always be more successful and be able to serve their customers better.

NISC recently launched a Business Process Consultation group to assist organizations in targeting these multi-departmental processes and provide a guide that will help them in developing their own process maps so their employees can better understand the big picture of their enterprise. For more information about this service, contact me at ryan.staggemeier@nisc.coop or 636.755.2792.