Why I Don't Let Business Processes Interfere with my Business

I like to do two things. I like conversations with smart, intelligent and energetic colleagues. I also like to do intelligent, interesting and creative activities that add value for me, my company and my customers. The low points of my day are when I have to follow a business process designed by a well meaning, yet clueless, colleague, with no insight into the context in which I operate. I normally face three type of processes.

Poorly Designed processes that I cannot avoid
I tolerate the business processes that I cannot avoid. Expense reporting, leave application and time recording. I just put up with the mediocrity of these processes. I don't question them. I apply the experience and patience I gained from working for the Indian government, which is a poorly implemented version of British bureaucracy.

Poorly designed processes that I can and do ignore
These are the dreaded excel sheets or PowerPoint based templates designed by over enthusiastic colleagues who genuinely believe that they are helping others. Some of them are so motivated that they conduct two hour training programs on how to "fill out these forms in just 15 minutes". I just politely ignore such processes because they add no value to me or the business.

Clearly defined goals supported by simple flexible tools
Conversation, design and content creation are the best part of my work.  I enjoy activities such as talking to customers, understanding their problems and gathering their requirements. I also enjoy capturing my ideas, sharing them with colleagues and solving problems or designing things together with them.

I design my own business processes
Interestingly enough no business process can help me earn the trust of customers, help them solve their problems efficiently, create world class products and beat the competition. So I take tools that give me basic capabilities and come up with my own processes and templates that I design for myself. I add or remove features based on the context of my work. I invite people who will add value to the work and let them modify the process or template based on their context.

For example I use Atlassian Confluence wiki, which for all practical purposes has only two buttons. Edit and Save. I use this tool for almost every content creation work. Even though there are prescribed (and poorly designed) templates for content creation, I use Confluence for everything I do and transfer the content to the prescribed (and poorly designed) where required by policy or law. For content creation Atlassian Confluence is way better then any tool in the market.

For activities other than content creation, I use Streamwork. I create an activity in Streamwork, provide the context and invite only the people who matter. If they want to add more content to the activity, they can. They can also invite other people who they think can help. The open nature of Streamwork activity enables intelligence people shape their business process. I use stream work to manage my own performance, educate customers, bring people together to solve specific customer issues, manage exceptions, discuss design ideas, get feedback and take critical design decisions.

If you like what I do with Streamwork, you can try it out for free.

How I am recruiting customers as trainers for my product for free

I recently recruited a current customer to mentor another customer, who is implementing my product, SAP Enterprise Learning.

Customers trust advise from others who have ran into the same problems
We all read product reviews in Amazon and restaurant reviews in Yelp. Yet, as product managers, we think customers should trust us when implementing or using our products. Customers may like us. But they trust others who have been through the pain. Customer trust other customers from their industry more than they trust the product manager who has, at best, second hand information about the industry.

Customers want to teach
Customer love to share their thoughts and advise others in their industry. Because it is a learning process for both customers.

Customers are honest. 
Unlike product managers, who are bound by a lot of red tap, legality, policy, accounting laws, lawyers with a lot of time in their hand, marketing people who are out of touch with reality, clueless managers with competing priorities, and office politics, customers tell it as it is.

You are not in control any way.
If all this makes you feel that you may lose control of you message about the product, I have news for you. You are not in control. If you think otherwise, you just don't know that yet.

Can the software build a customer relationship for you?

By the way, I already had a good relationship with both the customers. You got to have that. Even a cool iPhone app cannot create a relationship for you. You got to work to create trust and  lasting customer relationship. Although I read somewhere recently that women prefer men with iPhones.

How much did it cost me?
Nothing. I just created a learning activity in SAP Streamwork and invited both customers to participate. They started the conversation the moment the second customer joined. All it took was a polite nudge from my part. You can do this too. Try it out. Be the CEO of your product. Recruit customers to train other customers.

You can make a big change by Nudging people in the right direction

I am listening to the audio book Nudge. It talks about how designers of policy, products and services can do small, simple things to make a big difference in the lives of people. For example, you can design a form, frame a question, design a layout or design a sequence to significantly alter behavior in people.

The book talks applying choice architecture to influence people's lives. Software product designers have a lot to learn from this book. I am applying some of these concepts in the people management system I am designing at work.

How I am mobilizing minds across companies and building a trusted network

I was required to train a partner on the requirements of a key component in my product, SAP Enterprise Learning. They are developing an add-on solution for my product and it is critical that they develop it within the framework of the core architecture of the product.

It was a perfect opportunity to innovate.
Knowledge about this key component resided in the heads of 4 very busy experts working for multiple companies across the globe. I was transitioning to another project and could only spend 10 percent of my time on this activity. I had very little time, no budget allocated and a huge challenge in front of me. It was a perfect opportunity to innovate.

I invited partners to register for an informal learning activity on the subject
Rather than conduct this learning activity via multiple emails or expensive workshops, I created a learning activity in SAP Streamwork, and invited the partner to 'register' for the learning activity by accepting my invitation.

I encouraged the partner to invite their service providers as well
Since the tool I am using is in the cloud, there are no technical restrictions on who they can invite. So the registration to this learning activity was viral. Consultants who work for the partner and external service providers, who need to understand the detailed requirements joined the activity as well.

I have complete administrative control over the activity
Yet, I have complete control over the participants and can remove any participant any time.

I invited the experts from around the globe
I invited product management colleagues, architects and experienced consultants from another partner to share their knowledge

I shared my views to set the stage
I seeded the activity with some thoughts and views based on my own research. The moment I did that multiple experts chimed in with their views and fine tuned my inputs. All participants get daily or immediate automatic updates of all activities.

The partner is pleased and very motivated to build the add-on solution that will provide value for customers, make then successful and drive revenue of SAP Enterprise Learning.

It is not just a learning community. It is a trusted network
Even without realizing it, all these experts, who have not seen each other face-to-face are turning into a trusted network of professionals with common goals. I am sure their relationships will extend beyond this learning activity.

I use SAP Streamwork to create this informal Learning activity. If you like what I am doing, you can give it a try too. Streamwork is on the cloud and it is free for up to five activities. The home page of SAP Streamwork will say that it is a collaborative decision making tool. Yes. It helps you do that. But it can do much more than just help you take a decision. Please leave a comment here with your thoughts and ideas.

Go ahead. Be the CEO of your product. Take charge of the ongoing education of your partners and your ecosystem.

How I am delighting a customer with an informal learning activity about my product

A large life sciences company in the San Francisco Bay area is implementing my product, SAP Enterprise Learning. I ran into them at the annual conference and they had some questions, wanted to learn about the product, the experts who can help them implement the product, and the resources available.  I rattled off several information resources they can use, mentioned some customer implementations similar to them, spoke about how some customers have scaled to hundreds of thousands of users and so on. They were a little anxious and wanted some guidance.

After I came back from the conference, instead of sending them a polite follow-up email or just introducing them to an account executive, I decided to delight them with an informal learning activity stream.

I recalled their questions and shared key resources with them.
I created an learning activity stream in SAP Streamwork, added the books and resources I mentioned to them during our conversation. I also outlined my thoughts about some key issues we discussed.

Registration for the Learning Activity is viral and open to anyone even outside the customer organization.
Customer can invite other colleagues or implementation partners to join the learning activity. I made it clear to my customer that he can invite others to participate in this ongoing learning activity.

I am also creating a community with common learning goals
I sent an invitation to my product management colleagues who have never met this customer and my development colleagues who are intimately aware of the implementation details of the parent company of this particular customer. They love it because this gives them a heads-up about what is going on with this customer.

I plan to invite another customer from the bay area to join this activity to share his thoughts
Since this customer has questions about landscape and scalability, I offered to connect them with another large customer, who has a lot of experience in this area. It is just an informal introduction. How they learn from each other depends on their relationship.

The tool I use automatically recognizes the people who are part of this activity and knows they are a community in this context and only in this context. They know each others contact information, the context in which they worked with each other and the exact information they shared with each other. The connection is implicit. It is up to individuals to make their connection richer by engaging more.

Not a replacement for any formal process my company has in place
I made it clear to the the customer that this is not a replacement for formal support processes or training programs.

Not a place where we discuss very confidential matters.
This is a place for learning and information exchange. Not a place to post sensitive information about the company. I almost treat this like a classroom training program for the product where everyone knows the instructor is there to share knowledge, not to provide solution to all problems.

When I transfer my responsibilities, I can ask another "instructor" to take charge
I may transition to another responsibility some time in the future. At that time, I plan to transfer the ownership of this learning activity to another colleague who will then lead the activity.

You do not have to be an account executive or a sales person to educate your customer.
You don't have to conduct an expensive 3 day training program that takes six months of planning to educate your customer. You do not have to travel across the world to do this. You can engage your customer in Seoul, from your home office in Amsterdam or Hyderabad.

I use SAP Streamwork to create this informal Learning activity. If you like what I am doing, you can give it a try too. Streamwork is on the cloud and it is free for up to five activities. The home page of SAP Streamwork will say that it is a collaborative decision making tool. Yes. It helps you do that. But it can do much more than just help you take a decision. Please leave a comment here with your thoughts and ideas.

Go ahead. Be the CEO of your product. Take charge of delighting your customers.