If you’ve ever seen a well-worn trail that ignores the pavement to chart a direct line between two points, you’ve seen a ‘desire line.’ Designer Robert McFarlane describes these short-cuts as “paths and tracks made over time by the wishes and feet of walkers, especially those paths that run contrary to design or planning.”
A university architect may have been trying to say something with oblique angled paths and intersecting walkways, but the students who trod the desire line right across the middle of the quad lawn just wanted to get to their classes on time. They found the ‘free will way’ – the simplest, if not the intended way.
Humans love simplicity
We humans love simplicity, and so complex and clever landscaping will usually lose out to a clear line to our goal. Unfortunately, the same can easily happen in our businesses, with people’s eyes glazing over at the sight of complicated procedures and detailed compliance requirements.
When the inputs are obvious and the outputs are defined, all too often the path between the two gets simplified to the shortest distance. The problem is that those desire paths can be disastrous for operations, leading to missed requirements, process breakdowns and significant business risks. The complexity is there because it’s necessary, and the challenge for us is to embrace that in our processes without losing the compliance of the people responsible for executing them.
Business operations are not simple things in reality. There are layers of detail that exist because they’re essential for understanding the nuances of the organization and its customers’ needs.
The complexity is important for capturing not just the basic rules of what’s required, but all the exceptions and variations that occur through changing technology, global contexts and varying legislative frameworks. Those elements allow for precision in the handling of the operations and certainty in dealing with situations that just can’t be accounted for by a simple overview.
Balancing complexity and simplicity
So how can an organization retain that level of necessary complexity in its processes but still cater to the desire for simplicity in the people responsible for executing them?
1. Keep the way forward simple
Processes that aren’t being used aren’t doing your company any good. At the front line of your business, processes need to be clear and straightforward. They should be easy to access for the business teams responsible for them and need to set out the major steps for execution in a simple framework. That includes each major task and the responsible parties clearly defined.
2. Make the right way the easy way
The tendency towards short-cuts – the desire paths – is borne out of convenience. Where processes require manual handling of data, laborious entry of forms and long-hand communication, people will tend to find ways to sidestep the grind.
Effective automation tools and well-designed workflows can reduce these frustrations and streamline process execution. Make sure your IT specialists and process teams work alongside the subject matter experts to design your automation solutions and ensure that the resulting workflows reduce friction for the people who have to use them.
3. Layer the complexity
Those exceptions and variations in your processes can’t be ignored, and neither can things like compliance requirements, risk management sign-offs and procedural documentation.
However, not all of that needs to be immediately visible to process users. It just needs to be available for when they do need it. Layering content through well-designed process maps and a process management tool that allows users to ‘drill down’ into task detail, document libraries and sign-off structures ensures that simplicity isn’t sacrificed, but the complexity is preserved where it’s needed.
The drive in recent years to simplify business operations has done many organizations a disservice. Complexity is necessary and allows businesses to function effectively in the ever changing and widely varied environment of today’s industries.
The answer to navigating this complexity is not in dulling the edges of our processes, or ignoring them in favor of the desire paths of our business teams. The better way is to embrace the detail where it matters, making our processes effective for users through better automation and tools that present the right level of detail at the right time – giving people the information they need to find the right path, not a shortcut.