“Where Were You When?” (WWYW) moments bind us together.  They are a generation’s touchstone and cement a shared identity.   My parent’s generation included December 7, 1941 — Pearl Harbor and June 6, 1944 — D-Day.

My first WWYW moment was fifty-five years ago today, Nov 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy’s assassination at Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas.  I was nine years old, in the 4th grade, in Ft. Sumner, New Mexico.  It was a Friday.  Mrs. Bulalee Herring was my teacher — a strict but fair teacher as I remember her — a pit bull in a poodle suit.  We had returned to class after the lunch period and she was delayed. (Mrs. Herring was never late, only delayed.)   She had been crying and was very upset.  She instructed us to gather up our things and coats, as school was dismissing early; the school buses were on their way.  She said President Kennedy had been assassinated.

One of my classmates raised their hands and asked “What is assassinated?”

Mrs. Herring said he had been shot and killed. She said this would be a very important few days to remember.

Dealey Plaza

How true she was.  We gathered spell-bound around our black and white RCA television and watched. Our village received one VHF channel, KBIM out of Roswell, New Mexico.  We watched Jack Ruby shoot Lee Harvey Oswald.  We watched the president’s funeral procession and John John’s salute.

I was leading a Process Mapping / Triaging session at Sprint Corporation when 9/11 happened.  We gathered around a television monitor in a break room and all the feelings of my childhood’s “Where Were You When” day flooded my emotions.  I sent everyone home, explaining, “This is your generation’s Pearl Harbor. Your Kennedy Assassination.  Clear your calendar and watch it carefully, as it will be permanently imprinted.  It may change the political course of your generation.”  And it did.

My most treasured WWYW moment, by the way, is when I saw a stunningly beautiful young woman tending a breakfast bar in college.  It wasn’t love at first sight, but it was definitely “Someone Really Different at First Sight.”  She’s still amazing after 41 years of putting up with me.

Is it bragging if you can do it?

The Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS®) includes a proven best practice when holding meetings.  Participants grade the meeting at its conclusion on a scale of 1 to 10; 10 being this highest score, meeting or exceeding all expectations.   I’m told from EOS® Implementers that a score of 8 or better is solid work. “Ten” is over-the-top-excellent.

The Process Triage participants scored (below) our all-day workshop as part of the sponsor’s closing remarks.   They are our client’s go-to subject matter experts.  We process triaged one of their most strategically important functions.  The agenda included collaborative process mapping, a Process Capability Goal review, nominating Pain Points  that inhibit this goal, then process triaging these pain points into solution proposals.  Finally,  they ranked these proposals and signed up to mentor their implementation.

It’s an intense day, built on delegating and elevating those who are closest to the work to improve the work flow across the whole team.

For reasons of confidentiality, I can’t mention the client or their process, but here’s a photo of the scores.

By the way, the most successful post-Process Triage improvement implementers are running on EOS®.

EOS® is a registered trademark of EOS Worldwide, Inc.

One of our company’s core values is leaving every customer with a referable quality touch. Every time, every touch.

We also want to give back to our communities.  For example, when it makes sense, we waive our workshop fees if the triaging enterprise helps children.  Like Dr. Melanie Macrorie’s team at Autism From the Start (an amazing autistic preschool) or Lee Nasehi’s crew at Lighthouse Central Florida (vision impaired), or  Denise Gurule’s shop at FeedAmerica San Deigo, or Lonnie Vanderclise and Kelly Wilson’s amazing work at Weave Gotcha Covered, a work release program reuniting moms with their families.

At the writing of this post, there is a media storm about separating one in six children of adult foreign citizens who attempt to trespass into the United States with their minor children* (five of six children were already separated when their parents sent them with, or are trafficked by other adults).

Under current law (decades old), the adults are queued to Homeland Security processing and their minor children are queued to Health and Human Services (HHS), an arrangement codified and enforced for many years. Parents and children are usually reunited promptly (the same day typically) unless an adult trespasser claims asylum, at which point HHS may only care and protect the children for 20 days — likely less than the asylum process. It can get messy, but this separation was entirely the result of the trespasser’s choosing and our amazing American compassion for the downtrodden.  We separate children at the southern border if a familial or custodial relationship cannot be established (fraud), if there is suspicion that the children are victims of human trafficking, or if the adult is referred for prosecution for illegal entry.

So let’s fix it.  We need to agree on what the process is (as codified in the law), then triage it against a capability goal that, if delivered, fulfills our core values.  I will personally facilitate the triage.

What we know from hundreds of Process Triage workshops is any process under siege will benefit from a triage session, similar to a medical facility during a mass casualty event. Triaging determines the type of treatment or solution and queues these solutions to address the most urgent and efficacious first.

So, for the kids, I’m offering Process Triage’s services — our Flagship Workshop to triage the Immigration and Naturalization Process. 

We’ll need an Executive Sponsor and the smartest, go-to, believable experts who live and work the process.  I have no doubts we can stack a list of implementable improvements of what to fix first, consistent with our national values, responsibilities, and compassions.

* There is no such thing as an illegal immigrant. Immigrant is a status assigned to a foreign or alien citizen recognized by our Immigration and Naturalization Service; a status granted by our sovereign government, and not self-assigned by the person seeking to immigrate or mislabeled by a private citizen or confused media. If one does not have immigrant status, one is respectfully assumed to be a foreign citizen. And one should be treated with the respect, terms and conditions according to our laws and treaties — just as we wish respect when traveling abroad.  If we break another sovereign nation’s visitation laws, we should expect to be treated as they see fit.

The Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing, Emory University.  From #8 to #4 in the nation.  How ’bout them apples!

While our Process Triage workshop is a one-day intense event, its effects can be profoundly positive when the team’s improvement proposals are implemented.  This is the case with the Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing at Emory University.  We met Dean Linda McCauley in Atlanta when Rosey presented at Vistage Chair Larry Hart’s group in 2014.  Dean McCauley triaged their student recruiting and student life processes that fall, selecting faculty and staff go-to’s as triagers. The initial improvements list focused on these “producer” improvements.   They were followed by groups of student triagers to get a Voice of Customer perspective — “customer’s” improvements.  These students generated a ranked list of proposals as well.  Dean McCauley directed the customer/student list be worked first.  

The Director of Recruiting, Jasmine Hoffman project managed the improvement efforts.  The successes led to Jasmine and Rosey teaming up to present to the Graduate Nursing School Recruiting Association’s annual meeting the following year.  Rosey presented the theory of it and Jasmine presented Emory’s case study results.  That led to us triaging in other nursing schools such as California Baptist (Dean Geneva Oaks), Case Western Reserve (Dean Mary Kerr) and Johns Hopkins University (Dean Patricia Davidson, four processes triaged).  So we’re well acquainted with some of the highest ranked nursing schools in the nation.

We were delighted to conduct a refresh triage at Emory this year. Dean McCauley returned as sponsor and Jasmine served as host.  One of the returning triagers, Arnita Howard, Director of Careers Services and Student Affairs offers her insights:

Process Triage in brief, is designed to evaluate a business process and identify areas for improvement.   When first approached about participating in this “exercise” it seemed more like a way to pinpoint, with incredible detail and specificity, all of the ways that our process fell short.  Two intense days evaluating how we interact with and serve our prospective students from the prospect stage to orientation yielded some incredibly helpful feedback about how we might increase enrollment and convert more of those prospective students into admitted and enrolled members of our community. 

Fast forward to 2018, almost four years later, and we are once again coordinating a triage to evaluate our student life cycle from orientation to alumni.  We have experienced unprecedented application growth as a result of the strategic enrollment initiatives implemented after the first triage in 2014 and now we have to figure out how to manage increased enrollment.  During this second exercise we triaged our student experience and I must admit, I am genuinely excited to participate in a process that is sure to yield a positive return on investment.  Initially, I was skeptical and frankly threatened by what might be revealed by evaluating our business process.  This time, I look forward to hearing from members of our team about how we can transform the overall student experience, thereby increasing our student satisfaction rate by 100%. 

Process Triage challenges you to take an in depth look at the services and/or product that you provide, identify pain points, and then allows YOU to think strategically about how to prioritize improvements.  Arnita Howard

We couldn’t have said it better.

From #8 to #4 in the nation.

Process triaging helps with the right list of improvements. In the right hands, good things happen.

Well check this off my bucket list!  I’m delighted to announce EOS® implementer extraordinaire Chris White and I have co-authored a short primer on Process Triaging.  It’s a quick 32-page read that skips a rock across the Process Triaging pond, touching the essential points.

We subtitled it “How to Build Repeatable, Sustainable and Scalable Core Processes in Your Business.”  The primer covers how process triaging with your own expert core team — your Go-To’s who live the process works.  It’s about setting the conditions where senior leaders can delegate the day-to-day tactical improvements to those closest to the work. Doing that well drives a powerful, continuous improvement capability.  Chris adds additional thoughts on how companies running on EOS® can apply Process Triaging to deepen their EOS® effectiveness.

If your new to Process Triaging, this very modestly priced primer can get you acquainted with us.

The Process Triaging Primer

So — if you want to understand the essential outline of Process Triaging, this is it!  As always, reach out and request a complementary case study of a company in your industry. It’s likely we have one.