The Power of the Flow: Why People Aren’t Processes
In the early days of my career, I lived by a simple, three word mantra handed down by an executive: “Flow it out.”
Whenever I hit a wall with a complex problem or struggled to understand a system, I would sit down with a blank sheet of paper and a pen. I would map the journey from point A to point B, identifying potential points of failure, weighing risks, and uncovering the hidden gears of the operation.
Today, I still do this. The medium has changed because I have traded the legal pad for tools like Visio or Lucidchart, but the importance of the exercise has not budged. Digital tools make it easier to share and edit, but the goal remains the same: turning “I think I know what is happening” into “I can see exactly what is happening.”
However, as I moved into managing larger teams and day to day operations, I discovered a dangerous trap: confusing a person for a process.
The Mystery of “The Admin Does Her Thing”
I remember sitting in as an observer for a team training session. As I looked around the room, I noticed something odd: none of the trainees had their workbooks. The session was stalled.
When I asked why, the explanation was simple: “The person who brings the books is running late.”
This was the perfect moment to “flow it out.” We started walking through the operational diagram, boxes and arrows everywhere, until we hit a specific step in the middle of the chain. The box simply said: “The Admin does her thing.”
I paused. “What exactly is her thing?” I asked.
The team looked at each other and shrugged. One person replied, “I don’t really know. She just takes care of it. The books just appear.”
People Are Not Processes: The Need for Redundancy
That moment was a classic management lesson. By labeling a human being as a step, the team had blinded themselves to how their own operation functioned. When you treat a person as the process, you lose two critical safety nets:
- Redundancy: If the process is “Mary,” and Mary is stuck in traffic, the training stops.
- Backups: If you do not know how the books get from the printer to the desk, you cannot have a Plan B when the primary path fails.
I had to explain to the team that this was a person, not a process. We sat down and actually flowed out the logistics. We turned that magic into a series of documented steps that anyone could follow in a pinch.
Success Beyond the Individual
As it turned out, that Admin was incredible. She was so incredible, in fact, that she eventually moved on to a bigger role. She was too talented to stay in that position forever.
In many companies, her departure would have been a catastrophe. The magic would have walked out the door with her, leaving the team scrambling to figure out how to even start a training session. But because we had taken the time to flow it out and identify the actual mechanics of the task, her departure was not a crisis. We had a repeatable solution ready for the next person.
Pro Tips: Identifying the “Black Box” in Your Process
Whether you are using a whiteboard or digital software, look for these three red flags during your next session:
- The “Verb Person” Trap: If a step is labeled with a name (e.g., “Give it to Mary”) rather than an action (e.g., “Upload PDF to Shared Drive”), you have a person, not a process.
- The “Magic” Step: Ask your team, “If this person won the lottery and left tomorrow, who knows how to do this step?” If the room goes silent, you have found a single point of failure.
- Missing Inputs: If the team knows what comes out of a step but has no idea what goes in, that step is a black box.
“Flowing It Out” Prompts for Your Team
Ready to audit your own operations? Use these prompts during your next planning meeting:
- “Walk me through the path of this document. Who touches it, and what do they change?”
- “What is the very first trigger that starts this workflow?”
- “If the person currently responsible for this task is unavailable, where is the manual or checklist for their backup?”
- “Are we relying on someone’s memory, or is this step recorded in our system?”
The Bottom Line
Your people are your greatest asset, but they should not be your process. Build a system that includes redundancies and clear steps. That way, you can celebrate your people’s growth and promotions without watching your operations crumble in their wake.