Process Improvement Vs. Engagement

“"Profit isn't a purpose, it's a result.” - Simon Sinek

Process or people - which one produces the best results, most reliably? This is a question I’ve tangled with over the years, having a career which firmly straddles both leadership development as well as process improvement and struggling to identify where to concentrate my effort. Truth be told, I think it’s a terrible question.

Asking what will provide us with the best results speaks to our motivations - our reason for doing what we do. A business needs to be profitable to be successful, so surely the objective is to make money, right?

Wrong. I think of businesses like machines, tranforming effort and resource into profit. While it’s true that a goal of any business should be to remain profitable (obviously), profit is simply what happens when the machine is functioning as intended - profit is an output; nothing more than the product of an effective machine.

So, process efficiency could be the way to go. Get the machine oiled, it’s parts fine-tuned and it’s programming maximally efficient and you’re definitely on the right track… but this still doesn’t answer our question. For the business to process anything, it needs inputs. Effort and resources.

With that in mind, it becomes obvious that the inputs are every bit as important as the processes. However, increasing the quality of input (specifically, the effort and engagement of your people) is much more subjective and indefinite than streamlining processes. You can map out every step of a process to almost infinite detail, take out unneccessary steps and eliminate waste - it’s logic and maths. People, by definition, are more complex than this.

People have competing needs and desires not only within the context of work, but in their wider lives.

So, the question isn’t just “which is more important”, but “which needs more attention/effort?” - and (almost) universally, it’s people who come out on top. There often isn’t a clean, polished solution to engagement issues in the same way you could improve a process. Not only do they cost money and time, but what works for one person might actively disengage another. This isn’t something that can be achieved through a series of workshops and courses. It requires sustained effort and care for as long as the business exists.

So why bother? Firstly, it is an indicator that you’re treating your people well - simply doing the right thing often gets ignored (somewhat cynically, in my opinion) in favour of the business results when talking about this. Aside from that, engagement works like a magnifier. By focussing more on engagement, you’re not only increasing the amount of creative energy spent on process improvement (by the people who know the most about the processes they’re improving), but also maximising the impact of the processes themselves. Not only this, but many studies have shown that high engagement is directly correlated to higher customer satisfaction, business results as well as lower sickness and turnover. Ethical employers should probably aim for high engagement regardless, but it does also come with benefits.

So, process improvement vs. engagement? I’d invest more in engagement any day of the week. In fact, if I was to truly want to maximise engagement, I’m not sure I’d have a choice!