Today, as I was walking home from the shops, I noticed a father with his 18-month-old son starting to cross the street. “Look left, look right, and go”. The little guy was only looking straight ahead as he was standing next to Dad and crossed the street. I couldn’t help to smile.
It somehow made me think of my first exercise at the Information Analysis training I received in October 1993. I had just finished the Cobol programming course and exam (VSP1) at Volmac in The Netherlands.
In this exercise I was asked to give a clear description of the room we were sitting in. So I studied the room, prepared, and gave a detailed description. Big mistake!
The instructor gave me a very low ranking and stated my description was no good. When I asked why, he explained that he was looking for room to store and maintain his classic car! Wow, we were sitting in a small office room on the 5th floor of an office building. No good at all!
And this is my link to involving employees in the complete end-to-end customer process, whether it is for eLearning, or new IT systems, or looking for improvements.
Our employees always want to do a good job. They would always like to do things a little better tomorrow than they did them today. But to achieve that, they have a right and a need to understand what the customer wants and what that means to do their job as good as possible.
They have a right to understand the total process, both from the customer’s perspective and the internal perspective, and all the good work others do in supporting the process. If they understand that, then they can reflect on their own tasks and responsibilities.
And for the little guy crossing the street? Well, his time will come!
