It sounds a bit smug doesn’t it?
It isn’t enough to study the work, you also need to know how the work works.
What does it mean?
Let me give you a couple of examples:
1. How do you drive a car?
It is one thing to know how to drive; mirror, signal, manoeuvre. That is a useful skill. Something you need to understand.
But that isn’t the same as understanding how traffic works. How does it flow around roundabouts? Why does it bunch and relax in traffic jams? What will happen when your local council decide to add a bus lane or change the way traffic lights are sequenced?
2. How do you X-ray a patient?
It is one thing to understand how to use an X-ray machine. How to position the patient and camera to create the sharpest images.
It is another thing altogether to know how many drunks will arrive in casualty on New Year’s Eve, or why targets leave patients waiting for treatment.
Work works at all sorts of levels
- Practice
- Procedure
- Process
- Policy
Or maybe you can think of the impact of:
Work is complicated
Rule 5. Understand how the work works
If you don’t understand it, why on earth would you think you can improve it?
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Image by Keng Susumpow
James,
I like to say that you can’t transform something you don’t understand. Thanks for filling in a lot of detail and giving some examples of that. It’s so true, isn’t it?
Annette :-)
HEllo James,
Here, here! Yes, work is like an onion in that it has many layers. And the insight is generated when one generates into the various layers and thus surface anomalies and interdependencies. Is that why it is rare to come across organisations where there are folks who actually understand how the work works at anything other than a superficial level.
One of the things I do is to implement CRM, marketing automation, digital technologies. That involves understanding who the work works. That means getting folks that do the work, from various function-teams together, to understand how the work works and so to get at their business requirements. I still find it astonishing that so few folks have any real understanding of how the work works. Folks have been in the same organisation yet have no understanding of the work that occurs before it gets to them, or how the work works once they have done their work and passed it down the line. There are always Aha moments.
Maz