YAP — Yet Another Process

There’s a web application out there called YAM (Yet Another Meeting) and I thought it was interesting how the brand essentially tags meetings as wasteful, yet then supports these wasteful meetings with a tool. Funny…in a lot of ways. The same can be said for processes, or maybe they are procedures (or steps); it gets confusing.

In many companies that have existed for a while you’ll see great examples of end-to-end (cross-functional) business processes that no one can actually see or explain. They get all muddled up with non-value-adding steps performed by non-value-adding actors and are designed within the confines of a single functional area of the business. They focus on their own internal (departmental) goals, rather than understanding the result their customer (internal or external) actually wanted. From a value-added performer point of view, having administrative personnel (non-value-adding) ask you to do one more thing for them — that takes away from the time you want to spend he…