When new owners began to do an in-depth look at the assets they acquired, they wanted to take a hard look at the product development side of the business. They were concerned that this area was overstaffed and that it hadn’t been very productive. New product designs were needed, but the staff did not seem capable of innovating. A shake-up was clearly called for.
As they looked into the issues more closely, they discovered that one engineer stood out: Adam Jencks. He had been the only engineer to have seen his designs make much of a difference in sales. They decided to meet with Adam to see if he could shed more light on the design bottlenecks, and why he had been more successful.
When they sat down with Adam, they were surprised that another employee joined him: Buddy Samuels. As Adam explained, “If you want to talk to me about my design process, you also need to talk with Buddy.”
Without much prompting, Adam and Buddy just unloaded. “Our previous owners were big on process. Everything had a process and people were expected to follow that process. Those processes were generated by consultants who didn’t have a clue,” Adam began.
“It took forever for the engineers to put together the prototype documentation,” continued Buddy. “And then we started making the prototype. We found that it didn’t make sense from the documents we were given. Then when we reported this to the engineers, they would have to rethink the design and go through the entire documentation process again.”
“So, what did you guys do?” asked the new owners.
“Adam would bring me a napkin with an idea that had come to him while eating lunch in the cafeteria,” said Buddy. “That napkin started us talking about what he wanted.”
“And Buddy would often would often have a breakthrough idea that made the design realistic,” added Adam. “Our entire design process was a collaborative back-and-forth effort. There was never any documentation, just a napkin.”
“But weren’t you guys afraid of being fired?” asked the new owners.
“Our bosses hated the design process just as much as we did,” responded Adam. “They never let on that we weren’t using it. And they also realized that neither of us would ever work in a process-controlled workplace.”
With that, the new owners had a lot to think about.
How often do ill-conceived processes impede the vital work of an organization? And how have those processes destroyed the collaborative innovation that is so necessary today? It is often the case that what works can’t be described as a process. Rather it is the synergy of people working together, blending their talents, and unconstrained by a bureaucrat’s obsession with process.
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“Bureaucracy is the death of all sound work.” – Albert Einstein