Choose a journey, not a process

Process is useful for visualizing workflows. but have limitations when it comes to capturing detailed information.

Process doesn’t dive deep to visualize activities or tasks, that happens beneath the surface of what you do.

It floats at surface level to direct information from step to another.

There is a big fallacy about what does process mean.

Many of you often ask people about their process. That worked for growth, build a business, solve a problem, etc. So you try to copy their process that worked for them. But it won’t work or at least it will lead to unexpected results. Why?

First, your own needs, wants and environment differ than theirs. you have specific goals.

Second process is high-level flow of steps to achieve end goal. Those who shared their process, share it at high level, since our minds won’t go to nitty gritty. even if it did, the details of their environment differs than yours.

The process you copy lacks how to perform tasks. what support or tools you might need to perform them. And who else to involve.

It doesn’t offer much details, it’s a visual flow from 100,000 feet view. It’s good as a start to understand the workflow or for something specific but not for comprehensive thinking.

The reason it won’t work for your business case. It doesn't entail details of the system.

Even in cases when you try to solve a problem. you start by understanding the process, the workflow, which still at surface level. Again, it provides your a high level understanding but not the view to solve the fundamentals of the problem.

Process is about structuring the different steps, identify who is responsible and own the process. what you have to do is to map the journey of the specific thing you want to solve or create.

Journey contains a detailed information of what you need to do, how to do it and what tools you can use to do it. It allow you to uncover as many blind spots as possible. And design a journey that fits your needs, wants and environment.

Think about a house, we all live in a house but the internal environment from house to another is different. we differ in needs. Some needs 4 bedrooms, other need 2 bedrooms and so on. so are our journey, desires and vision are not the same.

Or the way to solve the same business challenge in two different companies going to be different. Each has its own internal systems, technologies, tools and goals. you can’t copy the same journey. Maybe the same process since its a high level. but at the deep levels they differ.

It's important to do a journey map so you visualize the details of what your goal requires. And what should be present in the background.

For you, a journey is something personal like the road you take, phases of life or travel from country to another. Yes, it is the same as a concept. But a journey is not only stepping stones to cross the river. Each step you take in your personal journey has range of activities and experiences.

You're like everyone else. You don’t want to reach your destination only to realize you've forgotten something important. You don’t want to put in all that effort and then face big surprises at the end. No one does.

You need an approach to reach your destination without surprises. In business or life, you judge the approach by the end result. To avoid surprises, issues, or missing key aspects in your project, think in systems. Use a journey map, not a process map.

First, if you google joinery map, you find that it's called customer journey map. It's used to map the journey of a customer. But the truth is you can and should use it for any thing like a challenge, need, problem, workflow, internal users, etc.

A lot focus its use around the customer but I use to a lot in my projects. Everything needs mapping since our mind lack ability to visualize interconnected elements.

I always say problem-solving is a creative space with no limits. You can adapt any framework or invent a new one based on the scenario and environment of the challenge.

Let’s look at the steps how you create the basic journey map:

• Define your objective: clarify what you want to achieve with the map (e.g., improving customer, employee experience, workflow, or process).

• Identify object: user, technology, or workflow that you aim to visualize and improve. capturing their goals, behaviors, and needs.

• Outline key stages: Break down the journey into distinct stages.

• Capture actions and emotions: for each stage document what actions taken by your object (user, workflow, technology). And their corresponding thoughts and feelings if people are performing the activities.

• Identify touchpoints: list all the interactions your object have or use at each stage. Touchpoints can include website visits, social media interactions, customer service calls, tools, emails, and more. Its the contact that occur between two things; between people and tech/tool or poople.

• Identify pain points: highlight obstacles or frustrations users or the object you mapping encounter at each stage of the journey.

• Explore opportunities for improvement: Identify areas to enhance the user or object you are mapping experience based on insights gathered.

The way you map things is the way you think system. The quality of your map dictates the quality of your outcomes.

Thank you for reading. We’ll talk in the next letter.

Ahmed

By the way, here is:

1. A fun way to connect with people that leads to opportunities Toilet Mind

2. A course of problem solving strategies in business Creative System Thinking

3. A new way to innovate and solve business challenges Neo Strateje