I was looking at the cause of the reason why many people do not rush to read this material and contribute. My coach suggested that most people get scared of any words and concepts that are not part of their common vocabulary. In fact may at that point even decide that the everything that has anything to do with such document is entirely outside their domain of interest.
He is right and this puts me in the face of the dilemma: how do I explain things that are very simple to me, that would require lengthy explanations if I want to avoid the "scary" words?
I cannot quickly change who I am and the way I think. The explanation of the terms and concepts that I consider elementary may be too long and dry for those who get scared of the terms and concepts. In the short term I will go for efficiency in my current terms; will use the concepts and terms without explanations that are too lengthy or complex and will start a parallel process to generate the metaphors and images that illustrate what I want to say so later on more people may find the material accesible and interesting.
All this came up because I am trying to describe processes, as something that we can and should manage for efficiency and quality. If I were to start here explaining how processes are activities that transform inputs into outputs I would not regain many of the lost readers.
So may be the first version of this project needs to be addressed to those people who have no major problems understanding what a process is and may even have an experience with processes and their management. Because my main goal is to help them transition the knowledge they already have and start them on the usage of process concepts in their personal life or in their activities related to small businesses.
I can then set aside the project of simplifying all this to the level where anyone can immediately grasp what I am saying for later. If my dream to get a group of people to react to my writings becomes reality, then personal examples and stories may enable me to build short simple stories for those scared by terms they consider unfamiliar. I can then simply state now that managing processes are important not only in large organizations but really for anyone.
From the point of view discussed here what is important is that anything that we do repeatedly is a process and if we figure out who are the important players in this process, what are key success factors worth monitoring, how we can discover the root cause of problems and create systems to avoid their repetition, then we become more efficient. Additionally, those capable of taking a statistical view, or at least wanting to find out more about ways to find low cost ways of reducing inefficiencies, can start looking at reducing variability as one of the least expensive ways of gaining superior control on processes.
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