Kevin Imel

In my day job, when I sit down with a customer and talk about business processes one of the first questions I ask after they explain the process to me is “Why do you do it that way?” The answer all too often is “Because we have always done it that way.” And that is my cue to take them on the journey of reimagining that business process. What we often find is that as rules/laws/requirements/whatever have changed over time they have bolted on some other sub-process to maintain compliance instead of reworking the entire process to make sure it was efficient. In one notable case from several years ago, a physical piece of paper was hitting the same two desks in adjacent departments three separate times over the course of a few days instead of just taking care of everything necessary the first time it hit each desk. Needless to say, that got fixed.