WHWH Technique of Improvement

Each one of us likes new challenges, new responsibilities at our workplace. But the biggest challenge most of us faced in our new responsibilities about how to proceed to handle the newly assigned responsibilities and comes out as a winner. This becomes more difficult when there is no mentorship, zero experience with the assigned responsibilities and lot of noise. The first question comes in our mind is how to make the best use of the available resources to convert noise into appreciation?  To overcome these challenges during working in the different work stream I implement a common WHWH technique to fulfil the assigned responsibilities.

What we do?

The first thing which we need to understand what we are currently doing or scope of future work. To deal with this we have to collect all the necessary information, possibly even minute details. We have to understand what is the scope of work and how we are currently doing it. Do not try to find out errors at this level. To win any war one has to understand the war zone first and not the strength of the enemy or the shortcoming of your own warriors.

How to perform?

Once you have all the details about the job you are going to perform. The next step is to understand what is the current/suggested process to perform the assigned job. Always remember there are several ways to perform a task and there is always a better way than the current one. But to start it is better to understand the each detail of the current process.

Why this way?

Once you have the details of the complete process, break the whole process in small steps and start asking/thinking why we are doing it in this way. There are quite fair chances that the step is added to handle some specific situation under some technological/procedural restriction which may not relevant in the available scenario. Human tendency is that they do not want to change the current situation and continue to follow without considering the change in circumstances.

How to improve?

Once you have found out the answer of your every Why start working on improving the process. First strike out those portions/steps which are no more relevant. Then find out those 10% portions which are impacting 80% of the process. At this level, understand the best quality of your resources and place them in the best position considering their weakness and strength. Collect all issues in the current process. Keep an open discussion session, asking the issues as per team’s view and a suggestion to mitigate that. Do not discard any suggestion, no matter how idiotic, usual or simple it is.  Even start looking for the weirdest solution one can come up with. Sometimes, the weirdest solution is the best one. Once you have all the issues/suggestion with you. Find out the top five highlighted issues and then brainstorm the solutions available. It is not always that you can find the solution but this is the way you can give a sense of ownership to the team and it will motivate them to do better. Sometimes you do not need to take care of the work, you only need to take care of your team and they will take care of the work.