Process improvement is a hot topic in almost all major organizations these days. This is evident by the proliferation of process improvement methodologies like Six Sigma, ITIL, and even Scrum to an extent. You can't really blame these organizations for focusing on process improvements. Processes, when done correctly, make things go faster, run more efficiently, and get things done for less money.
But there is a scary aspect to processes, too. One that is rapidly changing the business landscape as we know it.
First, we need to understand the nature of processes. Sure, we understand that processes make things better, faster, cheaper, but why is that?
Because processes are scalable.
An organization can easily create a guide to scaling what one person does and recreate it amongst many people.
For a long time in our nation's history, this worked pretty well. Think about the automobile industry. Henry Ford was able to create a scalable, easily reproducible assembly line to churn out thousands of automobiles. If one person on the assembly line left the company for any reason, it was pretty easy to replace him.
But there's an underlying problem here. One that lay dormant until technology became more prevalent: Processes can now be scaled beyond the existing pool of employees via technology and outsourcing. In other words...
If somebody (or something) else can do your job for you at a cheaper, better, faster rate, you bet organizations will opt for that over you.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not against processes. Everybody wants to look at organizations that do this as evil, but everybody has selfish tendencies, from the bottom 1% to the top 1%. (And that's another topic for another day!)
But this doesn't mean that all is hopeless. What do Bill Gates, Elon Musk, and Justin Bieber all have in common? (Yes, Justin Bieber.) They provide one-of-a-kind services / products not scalable on any level. As much as some record producers would love to be able to reproduce a Justin Bieber, it's just not possible.
I know those are some pretty big names, but this is not impossible for you in your own organization. The simplest notion is what we know as "going the extra mile", and while that's great, I would encourage going much further than just your day-to-day job. For me, that has been the creation of this blog as well as learning new skills like graphic design. (Which I hope to share more on soon!)
Unfortunately, the old "American Dream" is gone. We can't just punch in, punch out, and get a paycheck like former generations did. If we hope to have successful future, we need to change our minds with the changing times.
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