I have been learning a lot lately as I have been trying out Eric Mack’s Lotus Notes application called eProductivity. It is based on methodology from David Allen’s book on getting things done (commonly being tagged on twitter as #GTD). As I have been using this application, I have been starting to think more and more about workflow and processes.
For instance, I was about to enter a new action (To-do item) into eProductivity when I released that the action was actually part of a series of actions that needed to take place to complete a sale. Therefore, I decided that what I actually needed to be doing was to set up a new project with a number of actions which would relate to it to ensure a successful completion of the project. As I started to add the associated actions, I began to realize that the project wasn’t as simple as I had always thought it was, and in fact, would require a lot of more of my time.
After going through the various “actions†I found that I had actually put together a workflow process which would allow me to systematically work through each step. Now this brings to light something that I haven’t really been working with.
Systems can be very powerful as they create a proven path to success. This makes me think of the fast food restaurant MacDonald’s. MacDonald’s uses a system which has been able to be replicated many times over throughout the world. I don’t know of many MacDonald’s restaurants which have ever been struggling, even through the current global economic crisis. You could also consider other organizations which are system driven, such as most of the multilevel marketing companies which always state that success will come about if you follow their proven system.
I think that one of the most important things about a system is that it allows you the ability to be able to tweak processes. If the system doesn’t appear to be working you can track it through to the process which seems to cause it to fail, and adjust things accordingly.
After I kind of got my head around all of this I was able to recognize a couple of things that were of importance, relating to eProductivity
1. I think that every business should have all of their staff on a system like eProductivity as it gets them to think about what they are doing and why they are doing it. It could help them to become productive outside of just keeping track of things that they need to do on that day.
2. I would like to see some more functionality build into eProductivity (this may already be there, however, I am yet to find it), which allows for project templates. Therefore, if I create a new project (which is a common project), it can be based on a template which would populate it with predefined tasks/actions. This would be really helpful.
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