These 5 words will change the way you think about work.
High Frequency Predictable Value Demand.
You may think you and your team are working very hard but take a closer look.
Customer demand is the term for the thing that we need to work on.
Demand is of two types – according to John Seddon – failure demand and value demand.
Failure demand is work that results from not getting what the customer wants or needs right. Not being clear about the specification and building the wrong thing. Not fixing the problem and having to go back out again.
It’s still work – but it’s because the system is not delivering.
Value demand is work the client needs and wants.
It’s the good stuff, building a tool or process that makes things better, fixing the fault in the machine the first time, laying the driveway using the right technique so the flags don’t pop up after the first winter.
That last one is a sore point…
So what about the other three words?
Once you know the sorts of things your client values, you can organise for greatest effectiveness.
High frequency – which requests come along again and again.
In carbon reporting, for example, we know that there are several emissions sources that are going to be a feature of most organisations – electricity, gas, petrol, diesel, propane, and so on.
They’re also predictable – bills come along every month for some, but some are billed less frequently. We can still predict that we’ll get a couple a year so if they’re missing that’s a problem.
Once we’ve see what HFPVD is, we can design processes that make it easier and quicker to deal with that demand.
Instead of rushing around trying to get all this done at the end of the year, we can do a little every month and get it done over time.
This has the side benefit of being able to put in monthly monitoring and control, or feed into other systems and management reporting.
To learn more about how HFPVD fits into the development of better service processes read the article linked in the comments below.
Handcrafted insight 