CHAPTER 4:
Workflow Management: Communication Tools

This is a chapter about formal workflow process. A workflow process helps communication because it has a set number of steps. Everybody knows what the steps are. Within each step of a process there may be some flexibility, but everybody still knows the goal of each step.

What about project management (PM)? The same rules apply. The only difference is that the steps are not for an ongoing workflow process, but for a one-off project. The business of sales is a process. Opening a new sales office is a project. Both require a series of steps.

The unique point of this chapter is that process and project management are communication tools that can be applied to preventing and solving people problems. This chapter lays the foundation for how to do this.

Getting the Work Done

This chapter presents a high-level view of process skills and project management, both of which improve communication by ensuring common understanding about the work. A bird’s-eye view helps us gather sufficient knowledge to apply this business approach to preventing and solving people problems. If you want to dive deeper into these topics, there are many classes, books, and websites that cover them in detail.

Process and project management frame the work in business terms understandable to direct reports, peers, and upper management. They also facilitate setting expectations, monitoring progress, giving feedback, and coaching. Everyone knows the original plan and can compare it to the actual performance. The vocabulary is common to all and is work related rather than subjective and judgmental. When expectations are documented, information can be dispersed consistently.

Most jobs have a process, or methodology, which is a logical arrangement of tasks leading to achieving an end result. This is true for sales, engineering, manufacturing, finance, scientific fields, and IT, although the processes differ from discipline to discipline.

In fact, most managers are promoted because they are expert at the technical process demanded by their job function. As managers, they are then expected to oversee the processes and coach others to become proficient in the job process. Ironically, their managerial work will no longer be evaluated on their own outstanding process skills but on how well they communicate, work with people, and help their direct reports deliver results. Success in these responsibilities is achieved through process and relationships.

Everybody has process skills. They may be formal or informal. Using yours in day-to-day communication produces wonderful results because it gets everyone on the same page.

Process and Communication

What do process skills have to do with communication? How can process be applied to working with people? What has project management to do with preventing and solving interpersonal issues?

When people talk to each other, they often embed emotion into the conversation. Tempers can flare based on past experiences with a particular coworker or issue. When people don’t get what they want, they may or may not take the time to clarify each other’s meaning and work it out. One might say, “I can’t believe you thought….” Or they might just jump to, “That’s not at all what I meant.” Yet in reality, setting and gaining understanding on managerial expectations is just business. And the more process we build into setting and clarifying the expectations, the less personal it feels to everybody. Documented process helps clarify expectations upfront, saves time, and prevents disagreements later on.

Process is systematic and logical so it is easily learned. In fact, since most folks use process in their technical areas, they can transfer that skill to dealing with coworkers. Just change the content from technical to interpersonal relations.

Handling the interpersonal aspects of the job requires blending relationships, intuition, and process. Since process focuses on using observable facts to prevent, determine, and solve problems, process is a reliable pivot point when dealing with performance issues. Referring to process can help neutralize potentially difficult conversations.

Some companies have formal processes, especially for engineering or manufacturing. Standardized process is helpful because the regular patterns make it easier for people to repeat the process next time. It saves time negotiating the way teams solve future problems or make decisions. Process provides common vocabulary and promotes clear communication because all team members use the same methodology and know what to expect and how to proceed.

Lack of process and project management can cause organizational communication problems and confusion about priorities. Sometimes lack of structure promotes miscommunication among senior management, which ripples down to the rest of the company. It can create “camps” within the company. For example, in a small company growing larger in products, revenue, locations, and staff, the CEO and president disagreed on certain strategic directions. Some departments lined up behind the CEO and others behind the president. Much of this taking sides was based on previously developed relationships. When the company was small, things got done because relationships were leveraged and there was smaller scope to agree or disagree on. Now that the company was expanding rapidly, naturally it was more difficult to stay united. More structure was now required.

These same phenomena can occur on a department or team level as well. Often managers are surprised by communication problems that erupt as growth occurs. One seminar participant said, “When our group was smaller, we just knew what the other person needed and when and we provided it. And vice versa. Things just flowed. Now we have a lot of new people and they don’t get it. They don’t know how we get things done.” For better or for worse, the more the growth, the more the need for structure to solidify communication and thus reach the objectives. New people do not have the background or intuition to know what the team needs and how people previously operated together. They do not have the history of relationship nor the informal process that took place.

Defining Terms

Here are definitions of the terms workflow process and project management as they are used in this chapter. After this brief description, later sections provide more detailed explanations.

Workflow process is a series of interdependent steps that have a logical sequence from beginning to end and produce a result. The steps are best documented to make them repeatable and consistent for all employees. They are semipermanent and repeatable.

Project management organizes one particular project. There are also steps that must be followed. PM specifies who will do what by when and then tracks the progress for one particular project.

Example of Workflow Process

One example of process is the sales process. This process is similar from company to company although there may be minor differences. Chuck Carroll, a former sales executive, says, “A sales process is a set of sequential tasks to provide a product or service to a client in exchange for money. Sales is getting the prospective customer happily involved with the benefits of owning and using the product or service.”

Chuck adds: “From the first time a potential customer hears about your product or service until long after buying, you want him to have no surprises. Consistency in message before you talk to the client, throughout the sales conversations, and postsale is critical. You want a sales process that continues to support the client, makes them happy— Nirvana. It doesn’t happen by accident. You have to figure it all out ahead of time and follow the steps of the sales process.”

Here are the steps of a typical sales process:

1. Presales

2. Initial contact

3. Agreement on how the customer’s buying process and the salesperson’s selling process will dovetail

4. Definition of value

5. Demonstration—proof of the value

6. Agreement to buy and negotiation of the contract

7. Postsale implementation of product and customer service

Within each of the process steps, there is flexibility for how to achieve that step. This may vary from company to company or even from individual to individual. The manager must decide how much flexibility to delegate. Can you let the direct report decide how to accomplish each step? Or do you need to direct her on the how? How much authority are you delegating for each step?

Project Management Overview

Project management includes identifying project stages in the development cycle, estimating how long tasks typically take, and initiating a formal scheduling system that can easily be modified as multiple projects are managed across departments or functions. The system should have the capability to track accountability for meeting task deadlines. Accountability develops people and clarifies who is responsible for what.

Benefits of Project Management

So what are the benefits of using project management? It reinforces communication about who is responsible for what, when, and with whom they interface. This planning from the beginning to the end improves productivity, reduces redundancy, and minimizes rework. Project management shows the interrelationship of tasks, drives project schedules, and eases oversight of budget, risk, and quality. Project management decreases stress and miscommunications because all concerned have the same expectations and information about progress and/or delays. Let’s look at a situation that could gain from formal project management.

One growing company faced the challenge of moving most of its manufacturing overseas, remote from the staff. This arm’s-length manufacturing created major challenges and was a critical issue the company had to address. Almost 90 percent of its top products were now produced in Asia instead of the United States. This impacted every corporate function and required special attention from each function. The company now needed to bridge communications among finance, purchasing, engineering, product development, sales, and quality control with more structure, including formal project management.

When a company requires increased attention from every department, this calls for a new way to manage the interactions among the groups. Formal project management generally replaces informal project flow as organizations expand.

Another stimulant to implementing formal project management is expansion of product or service menus. In response to increased product demand and competition, a company concurrently upped the array of new products it developed and manufactured. This proliferation of new product types upset many employees because of their swelling workloads. Management needed to tackle new project and personnel realities due to these unintended consequences.

Some companies formalize project management to shorten product development from original definition to market. This helps new product team members know how long particular tasks in the product-development cycle should take. It is easier to estimate and track the required person-hours for each task. This means timelines and schedules that coordinate with multiple functions can be accurately developed and communicated with minimal confusion.

Formal project management limits impromptu decisions being made with inadequate information or consultation. Project management drives decision makers to gather enough specifics, from all people affected, to take appropriate action. When the determined action is well thought out, it avoids rework and employee frustration with ever-changing directives.

Project management also prioritizes tasks so that individuals are not left to set their own priorities. Communicating priorities keeps employees safe and productive as they work on important tasks. Employees can also be confident that there are formal dates for project milestones and overall deadlines. This eliminates blaming and miscommunication that can occur when dates are informal or unwritten.

Management Workflow Processes

It is easy to see that process and project management ease communication for tasks and projects. Managers also need to set up ways to ease communication with and among their direct reports. You need to create management processes so that you can get work done with and through other people. These processes help your staff know what you expect. They also routinize communication so that everyone can depend on regular information exchange. Two important management processes are meetings and status reports.

Using Meetings to Optimize Communication

Well-structured meetings are recognized as a productive use of time. They can enhance understanding of responsibilities and build relationships. They can save time in the long run if people are clear on roles and level of authority as well as due dates. Here are some tips to increase communication during meetings you control:

Weekly status/progress meetings, consistently done, contribute to two-way communication and benefit both direct report and manager. One purpose is to update the manager on progress made toward objectives, problems and how they are being fielded, and the employee’s plan for the next week. This weekly checkpoint provides an opportunity for positive and redirective feedback and thus keeps the work on track. When the manager and employee talk weekly about the work, they are more likely to stay in sync and avoid surprising each other. Weekly meetings also improve time management because the employee and manager can save up nonurgent questions and reports until the meeting rather than constantly interrupting each other.

Another purpose of a weekly meeting is that employees have regular access to their manager to build a relationship, gain clarification on expectations, and get needed resources. The employee can work independently between meetings and not be micromanaged because the manager is regularly kept informed.

For project, product, or business strategy meetings, decide who should attend meetings to enhance cross-functional communication. Ensure that invitees are included by functions that need to be there, since staff time spent in meetings is expensive. Be sure all invitees know in advance what they are expected to contribute.

Train and coach people to actively participate in meetings. Attendees should be held accountable for contributing information about their functions. Coach the person who remains silent in meetings and then complains later or waits until problems emerge. Sometimes these people are trying to avoid conflict. Help them learn how to address concerns as a business issue during the meeting to prevent larger conflicts and problems with others later on.

Some individual contributors may have been raised in a culture that taught them not to express their opinion if more senior people, or people of higher education level, are present. Helping these individuals, whose contribution is so needed at meetings, to speak up may take some one-on-one conversations. Privately explore their reluctance to speak. Reinforce how important their ideas are to other team members. Ask them what you can do to make it more comfortable for them to have their thoughts included in the meetings. Be patient as they transition.

Using Status Reporting to Maximize Communication

Institute routine status reporting. This offers opportunity for mutual feedback to flow continuously. Weekly status reports can be online or e-mailed or brought to the weekly progress meeting. A high-level summary of goals and status is submitted with whatever level of detail the manager requests. This helps trigger regular positive and redirective feedback and coaching. These reports also create a record to which the manager can refer when assessing formal annual or semiannual performance reviews.

The reports create a sense of urgency on a weekly basis for employees to meet targets. They also reassure employees that they are heading in the right direction. Direct reports benefit from timely, job-related feedback and have an opportunity to give feedback to their manager.

To elevate the importance of timely status report compliance, a measured objective could be added to goal setting on each individual’s performance appraisal. Communicating status to management is a vital part of the employee’s job. It is also a key management responsibility to know status as a part of effectively delegating.

Setting Expectations, Giving Feedback, and Coaching

Processes are common communication tools in companies. Standardizing the way a group does a job saves time and questions. Streamlining how work gets done saves money and reinventing the wheel. Processes provide the group with consistency and shared terms to discuss the work.

Project management affords the same benefits on a different scale. Effective PM drives project goals, schedules (including other groups’ roles in the schedules), budget, and milestones or checkpoints. This planning takes the past into consideration in terms of planning for the future. By knowing how long various pieces of the work have taken in the past, a project manager is able to estimate how long similar tasks will take on the new project. The project is broken down into these tasks, which are sequenced and then scheduled.

The project plan is a wonderful communication resource for the team because everyone knows what is needed by when. It also aids managers in monitoring and controlling the workloads, work progress, and deadlines. These formal plans communicate project status to the team as well as to upper management. Strong project management can preclude misunderstandings and problems that crop up with people.

One successful company that I worked with ran like a spinning top on the manufacturing side of the business. Why? Because it had procedures and processes in place. The employees knew exactly how to assemble the products and how long each part of the job should take. They knew who was next in the chain of getting the product built and why it was important to give it to them on time. However, on the engineering, sales, and product design side of the business, there were communication problems. It is true that these functions are more creative in nature and offer more discretion to each professional in how to accomplish tasks. Perhaps that is all the more reason to formalize project management. Without formal interdepartmental project plans in place, they experienced classic miscommunications such as complaining instead of problem solving. Conflicts intensified among departments and finger-pointing began. Groups blamed other groups. “Us-versus-them” thinking erupted. Time was wasted because a department would wait for information instead of being able to access it on a project management system.

Processes and project management plans help prevent these typical communication problems. And when they do occur, they are easier to describe in a factual way. Ideally an organization as a whole will have processes and project management in place. If so, learn them. If there are formal plans in place, you can develop and use project management within your scope of responsibility. If you already possess PM skills, they will serve you well in setting expectations, developing fair relationships, and following up on achievement. PM assists in giving feedback because it enables a manager to stay focused on the work issue instead of the person. In coaching, you know what skills to help with. Using process and project management focuses conversations on the business issues and away from emotions, opinions, and personalities.

Project management starts with detailed scope definition and helps fend off scope creep. When the scope of the work creeps larger and larger, morale and productivity can dive. When scope is clearly defined and agreed upon upfront with upper management, there are business and relationship reasons for staying on course. If changes are requested, they can be discussed in terms of the impact on the whole project. Project activities are identified and clarified before the schedule is set. Project scheduling may include a critical path diagram showing interdependencies with other groups and specific timelines for passing the baton to them. This heightens the importance of meeting deadlines as everyone can relate each task to the project as a whole.

Delegating, observing performance, giving feedback, and coaching can be targeted directly to ongoing project documentation and status reports regarding specifications, budget, and timelines. Having processes for feedback, coaching, delegation, and listening is equally important, and that is addressed in Part III of this book.

Summary

People often think of process as being a systematic approach to a technical way of doing things, an arm’s-length approach to getting work done. It is just business. Exactly. That is the same analogy to this book’s unique way to prevent and solve people issues.

Process and project management steps reinforce expectations in a clear, dependable way. The more employees know clearly what is expected, the greater possibility they can trust that the task will stay stable. Teammates and managers can share vocabulary and understanding of who is doing what within what time frame. This shared perception of expectations prevents miscommunications among team members.

Using process steps is logical and common practice with functional and technical work. But what happens when people problems emerge? Whenever people are involved, emotions can vibrate. If a machine fails, managers do not blame it and say it has a bad attitude. They usually do not get angry at the machine or try to avoid it. As quickly as possible, people gather data and analyze the observable facts dispassionately to determine the root cause of the machine failure.

Finding the root cause of a problem rather than using a bandage leads to determining a lasting treatment. This prevents future breakdowns. The same is true for working with people. In order to help them succeed and realize their best work, use process to prevent and solve people problems. Be clear on expectations, observe actual performance, give regular feedback and coaching, and find the root cause of any problems. And, as we will see in Chapter 5, using questioning techniques in all of these management endeavors enhances communication.