Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to the
Productivity Podcast.
Today I'm delighted to have areturning guest.
We've got Craig Willis, who isCEO at Score.
Hi, craig.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Hi, simon, great to
be back.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
Yeah, welcome back.
It's been a while since youcame on and, with that in mind,
it's probably pertinent if youcan give the listeners a quick
overview of what Score is, incase they've not listened to
that episode and they want to goand find it, or in case it's
completely new.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Yeah, so Score is a
process improvement platform
that organisations use to buildand establish a process library
standardised processes and thencontinuously improve off the
back of that.
The focus of Score is reallyabout engaging with people in
the business, so bringing thesort of human centric aspect of
(00:52):
processes, making processesuser-friendly, intuitive, to use
, easy to find so that theysupport people doing their jobs
and, as I said, forming afoundation for process
improvement for the wholeorganisation.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
An online platform
that you can share and
collaborate in.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
Absolutely.
I mean you can collaborate withteams to document, create new
processes, analyse thoseprocesses, as you say, share and
manage those and gatherfeedback so that you, you know,
so that the teams canincrementally or
transformationally improve theway the organisation works.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
Good.
So you know, it goes withoutsaying, you kind of know what we
do.
But process, documentation ofprocess, consistent application
of processor the Holy Grail formost organisations in whether
that be retail, office,manufacturing, supply chain,
whatever that might be.
So what kind of problems areyou seeing or what kind of
(01:58):
themes are you talking aboutwith your clients or potential
clients?
Speaker 2 (02:03):
Well, exactly
Everyone we speak to is aiming
to standardise processes andalso train people on those
processes or not just people,but nowadays obviously machines
and AI as well.
But the challenge that mostorganisations seem to face is
(02:23):
how do they actually build,embed and sustain that sort of
process improvement initiativeor process management
initiatives for the long term?
You know they can.
Often the build phase is theone that sort of gets all of the
focus.
That's when they go out andfigure out what the processes
are and, you know, go throughthat exercise to document and
(02:47):
standardise them.
But so often what happens isthings kind of stop at that
point and it becomes very, verydifficult to then keep those
processes up to date andcontinue to build on them.
And what a lot of organisationsend up doing is go through the
exercise of documenting all theprocesses.
They sit on the shelf to gatherdust and then the next time
(03:09):
someone picks them up they're soout of date that they've
basically got to start all overagain.
I'm guessing you will see thatwith your customers.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
Yeah, so there'll be
a programme, a project that's
kicked off, which is around,like you say, documenting all
these processes, getting themall in one central repository,
etc.
Etc.
That work happens certainly inretail hospitality.
People move jobs very quicklyso that person may move to
(03:42):
another function.
Therefore they're defunct.
They maybe haven't got a way ofsharing them or collaborating,
maybe it's in a tool where youneed a license and an install on
a local machine or laptop.
So again that gets lost in the,the transition or translation.
And back to your point a coupleyears later somebody else comes
(04:02):
back around and says oh, we'vegot to document the process and
to some degree repeat yeah, andI mean it's not like we're short
of online tools available toshare things.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
I think the real
problem I see there's two sort
of key problems here.
One is how do you engage peopleon a sort of day-to-day basis
in keeping processes up-to-dateand, you know, improving them,
because processes kind of aren'treally that exciting and they
don't really change massively orvery quickly.
(04:40):
But the problem is is when youdon't keep them up-to-date
regularly, then obviously astime passes, those changes do
get quite bigger, which is whyyou then end up having to redo
them.
So I see that as an engagementproblem.
And then the other kind of keyproblem I think we certainly
often see with a lot of ourcustomers is creating some sort
(05:02):
of clear line of sight from, youknow, the board or the or the
exact leadership team, rightdown to the sort of day-to-day
tasks that the staff are doing.
And it goes back to that thingthat you know.
That initial exercise todocument, standardize the
processes can be quite excitingbecause it often requires a
significant investment of timeand money.
(05:25):
But it's also where some of thethe biggest opportunities for
improvement get found.
But the challenge is, onceyou've kind of got over that
hump, you know, continuousimprovement is often more
preventative, and so it doesn't.
It's not always as kind ofexciting.
(05:45):
So you know, when you'remeasuring, say, at a high level,
the progress of your processimprovement activities is often
to do with, well, how manyprocesses have we documented and
reviewed?
And once you sort of hit thosetargets, it then becomes
difficult to measure whatimprovements you're making
because, as I said, if they'repreventative you're not
(06:07):
necessarily seeing a Animprovement, but you're
certainly avoiding majorproblems, risks and costs in the
future.
But it's not easy to see that.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
Yeah, I think for
those continuous improvement
departments, they're alwaysunder pressure to justify their
existence Exactly.
There's an easy cost cutting tosay, well, you know, we'll
streamline that department,we'll move that department on,
whatever it might be, and youneed that fact based.
You know, if you can cover thesalary as a minimum of that
(06:37):
department each year, then youjustify your existence.
You should be clearly strivingfor more than that.
But if it's cost neutral, whywouldn't you carry on?
Speaker 2 (06:47):
Yeah, exactly, and I
think what you need, or what
teams need to be doing, ismeasuring more.
I like to think of it is if youthink about how personal health,
if you want to get healthier,you don't just go for one run or
eat one salad, although that'sa good start, we often find that
(07:13):
we struggle to again sustainthat type of positive behaviour
that you really need to make ona long term.
You know, traditionally you'd besort of trying to go on your
diet and probably weighingyourself on a dodgy old pair of
scales once a week or so, andthe challenge with that is that
(07:37):
it's really hard to see progress, so it's really hard to see the
impact of those changes thatyou're trying to make.
It takes such a long time tolose weight.
If that's the aim of you, knowthat you're trying to the goal
that you're trying to reach,because nowadays it's much, much
easier, because we've got oursmartphones, we've got our
(07:59):
fitness trackers, so we tend tobe, when you're looking to get
healthy, you tend to be trackingthe calories that you're taking
in, you're tracking theexercise that you're doing, your
truck, you're tracking yourweight, you're probably tracking
sleep patterns and heart rateand all of those different
things, and so you can.
You can immediately start tosee an impact just in the data
(08:24):
from.
You know the efforts thatyou're making, so you're much
more encouraged to take thosepositive actions and to do them
much more regularly.
You know, to kind of to achievethose goals.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
Yeah, that makes
sense and I think there's
there's also a bit, isn't therearound where you focus your time
.
So the scale and thesensitivity of those processes
if you, if you, shave twominutes off a process that takes
five minutes only happens oncea year, yeah, that's all well
and cool, but actually if yousave 10 seconds off a process
that happens 30 million times ayear, you can see a much greater
(09:00):
reward and benefit.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
Yeah, and that comes
down to analysis, doesn't it?
And?
But, yeah, sometimes I thinkthat's where, when we measure
processes today, we we perhapsspend a bit too much time
focused on on the KPIs and PPI.
So, the key performanceindicators, or the process
performance indicators, wherewe're looking at how people
(09:26):
adhere to a process or the costsavings, is you point out there
if you're performing some sortof analysis?
And they're all really, reallyimportant?
Of course they are, but to methey're almost a little bit like
the standing on the scales oncea week.
In many ways, the health tracker, the personal health tracker,
(09:47):
and the ability to see all ofthat data now helps us
understand how all the differentthings we do influence each
other to be able to To reach thegoals, and so we see that very
much the same way with withprocesses.
So if you, if you, if you'retaking the time to To document
your processes yes, the keyperformance indicator if you're
(10:08):
looking at the sales process,what's the contract value or the
number of opportunities closed,those those are really key.
But if you, if you've investedin documenting and standardizing
that process, you want to beable to sustain that over the
time, you've also got to startlooking at things like you know
how we have we updated thatdocument recently.
(10:32):
Have as people?
Have people been using thatdocument?
Have we provided the right typeof information For people, such
as you know?
Is the process owner clearlyidentified?
Is the purpose of that processclearly show?
You know, there's all sorts ofinformation that we could be you
(10:52):
can pull together To be able tojust as you can with your
personal fitness tracker reallyget a feel for what's actually
happening with you with thatprocess documentation.
And how is that Impacting onboth the key performance
indicators and the processperformance indicators, process
(11:13):
health exactly, exactly that.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
So that kind of gets
me thinking about, if you think
in modern organizations probablyindustry agnostic almost we've
got lots of labor turn Payinflation.
I think there's, you know,stats that are bandied around
around more for every one personthat you employ.
(11:39):
There's one point for peoplethat leave an organization at
scale.
So this whole process, healthmust play back in then to
onboarding New colleagues andmaking sure you're training them
in the correct process ratherthan just inheriting broken or
interpretive process at a locallevel.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
Yeah, and that comes
back to that sort of
sustainability of the of thedocumentation, because the worst
thing that can happen is whenthose new people come into the
organization and Processes arehard to find.
If they can find them there,they're out of date.
And what often happens is thateven if even if they're not out
(12:23):
of date, then overly complicatedor difficult to read.
And you know, keeping engagingpeople in this process, creation
and ongoing update andimprovement of the process is,
yeah, it's gotta be moreinteresting than just here go
(12:44):
and read this, thisdocumentation.
So you know that's what we lookto.
What we aim to do is to trackall of those health metrics the
ones I mentioned before as wellas numerous other ones, and so
we can show to users what thescore of that process or any
(13:06):
individual process might be.
So you get this ability to themsort of compare them.
And if you think about thatagain, going back to the fitness
tracking apps, one of thethings that's quite common is
people sharing those throughsocial media saying, hey, look,
I did a 5k run earlier or I wentfor the cycle ride and you sort
of you also have this kind ofsort of bit of pride of your
(13:28):
involvement in that and doingthat, but also comparing that to
other people.
So that's a sort of key part tothat.
Engaging people is giving themthat.
So giving that data, thathealth data of the process is to
everybody, so they're much moreaware of what happens.
(13:48):
But then the other problem thatI mentioned before, which is
this ability to have this kindof line of sight from the
leadership or exact team rightdown to what's happening on on a
daily basis.
I mean, this is exactly the samechallenge.
I was talking to a, a CIO justlast week who said he said,
(14:10):
craig, you know the problem whenwe're in a board meeting and
somebody says you know what weneed to do, we need to go and
figure out all our processes andstandardize them as the first
step.
And he said everyone alwaysnods their heads but nobody
really knows how to actually goout and do that.
And so what we aim to do withthe health scores is to
(14:32):
basically take that low levelhealth score that we're looking
at on a process by process basisand roll that up to, you know,
an executive level, departmentallevel, whatever that needs to
be, so the different seniorexecs can start to look at well,
how is my part of theorganization or my processes
(14:53):
within my part of theorganization comparing against
others and then the ability tosort of set targets for the
whole group so that you know, sothat again everyone can see how
the whole organization isperforming and if there's a dip
anywhere, what do we need to doto go and bring that back up
again.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
So engagement is a
key part then, like, say, kind
of surfacing that information tothe execs so they can start to
see it, but also, then I don'tknow, gamification.
Is it so making, like you said,sharing stuff on social but
also making it interactive?
Are there leaderboards, thatkind of stuff that get people
excited?
Speaker 2 (15:32):
Exactly so.
You know, as you get downthrough the organization,
different teams and sort ofmanagement layers can then sort
of compare against each otherhow they're doing.
And we've certainly seen thisjust within our own team,
different groups gettingtogether and posting on our
internal social networks and hey, look, here's my score.
(15:54):
And what we do is we set atarget for the whole company and
then different teams are sortof trying to compete with each
other to hit or exceed thattarget.
And you straight away see thesort of change in behavior.
Because when someone startsposting saying, hey, look at my
score, it's sort of everyoneelse is like, oh wonder what
(16:15):
mine is.
And they dive in and have alook at theirs.
And then it's like, well, whatdo I need to do to get my score
up?
And you know that it goes backto those good behaviors.
It's good behaviors like well,you know, going and looking at
the process at the very least,if you haven't looked at it for
a while providing some sort offeedback to show that you've
understood it and that it'sperhaps changed.
(16:38):
And then you know, rightthrough to the whole governance
piece of actually updating andpublishing new versions of the
process, all of those thingshelp to push that score up, and
so you know we're doing it for abit of fun, but it's actually
really helping us keep theprocesses up to date.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
Yeah, I'm making sure
that it's not just an expensive
documentation exercise, thatyou then end up incurring the
same cost and maybe coming outwith, unfortunately, the same
outcome X or Y years later.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
Exactly and avoid, as
I said before, so much of
continuous process.
Improvement is aboutpreventative activity and so
making sure those things arehappening.
And of course, it's not justthat right If you've got a well
documented set of processes thatare up to date, it's also a
(17:29):
brilliant foundation fortransformation.
So if the organization is goingto go off in a different
direction or you want to accessa new market or introduce new
products, that sort of thing,you've got this amazing
foundation that's already verydynamic and able to move and
bend and respond very quickly tochanges that the organization
(17:52):
faces Excellent, okay.
Speaker 1 (17:54):
So just to summarize
then and tell me if I've got it
right, so it gives us a goodfoundation to build on, as
you've said there.
So the basis for that ongoingprocess improvement.
We can start to get under theskin of process health and
understand those different datapoints and bits of information
that give us that kind of healthcheck that then leads us into
the whole engagement piece withthe exact team down to the
(18:17):
colleagues in the organization,with clear targets but also that
element of gamification.
So it becomes a bit more fun, abit more interactive.
It's not just a and I'll say itbecause people are probably
thinking it a boring, oldprocess.
It comes to life a bit more andhelps us keep it alive.
Exactly that Perfect.
(18:38):
So if people are interested inthis and they think, yeah, been
there, done that.
We're just doing anothermapping exercise that's going to
get lost in the year throughtime, or we've done one and
people are talking about doinganother one and I'm worried
we're going to end up in thesame place.
Where's the best place for themto get hold of you or some of
the score team?
Speaker 2 (18:57):
Well, come along to
our website, which is
getscorecom, so G-E-T-S-K-O-R-Edot com.
You've got a choice, really.
You can request a conversationwith one of our experts who can
have a look at what you're doingtoday, look at your
requirements and see how thescore platform and its built in
(19:19):
health capability process healthcapabilities can help.
But we've also got some simpleguides as well.
So if you just want to sort oflook through and go well, what
are the sorts of things I shouldbe tracking, what structure
should I be putting in place todo this, then we've got that
available to download from ourwebsite as well.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
Amazing and I'll put.
We'll put the link to thewebsite in the show notes and
we'll put the link to yourLinkedIn profile as well, if
people just want to reach outdirectly to you via LinkedIn for
a conversation.
So thanks.
As ever, craig, always good tospeak and we'll catch up soon.
Speaker 2 (19:52):
Thank you very much.