Value Stream Mapping (Simple Plain English)

What up, family? So I want to talk about value stream mapping, a simple way to see how work actually flows. That's essentially what it is. It's something that I use in my day-to-day. I've been using pretty much all throughout my career since I stepped into the Scrum Master technical project management, again, as working as a Senior Agile Coach. So again, what is value stream mapping? Well, in the most simplest terms, it's simply a way to see how work moves from need to result or start to finish. We're looking at the whole flow, not just individual tasks or areas. I don't want to jump too much ahead of myself, but a lot of times as leaders and managers, we, we focus in on one area and we talk about systems, but we don't understand the way things flow through the systems at whole, especially when we're running different streams throughout our small business ministry, everyday life, or just everyday operations. Like it can— and I know I have small business on this, but it can again, it can scale from small to mega. Like value stream mapping can come— like you can use it as a lens to wherever you are in your journey or your organization. I'm trying to say. So that being said, we want to look at the entire flow. But the more streams you have, the more complexity you have and how you— the more detail you have to have. But we're going to keep it simple here and we can have those conversations offline because again, everybody has a unique context. So what is the trap? The trap is, again, as leaders, we sometimes fix one problem and accidentally create another one downstream. You've probably heard it best, kick the can down the road. But the thing is, is that when we're looking at a problem and it shows up, we oftentimes— there's nothing wrong. Like sometimes we can make that quick fix and it's just a tweak. We don't always have to come back to the value stream mapping, but if we see something systemic and you have people working hard and everybody's kind of having the same issue of complaining around the same thing. This is where that value stream mapping comes in because the system might actually be dictating the behavior and the system sometimes can be choking the life out of good leaders, like very good managers or stewards. Like it's the system itself. And so what I love about value stream mapping, it just doesn't ask the question of how do we make this person better or faster? No, it asks How do we improve the whole flow? Because we don't want to create more bottlenecks and create more stress. This is what value stream mapping in its simplest terms helps us think about. So in plain English, it says, hey, we want to map what actually is happening, not what we think, not what we desire. Remember in a previous video when I talked about making the work visible? And one of the Kanban principles is starting where we actually are. Because if you lie or try to fudge it because you like want the system to look better than what it is, then you're not being honest with yourself and you're never going to get to that system that you really want. So we want to start what's actually going on, trying to get detailed as possible as we get into the weeds. But again, we're not going to do that here. But we don't want to get into what we think happened. We want to get into what's actually going on. We want to look at every step, every handoff, the waiting, the rework, the decisions that's being made. Everything matters from start to end. The actual flow so eventually we can improve it. And if we don't, if we can't take action around it, then we've just really wasted our time with pretty charts that's not gonna lead anywhere. So again, it's about realness and actually capturing from start to finish, whether it's an event, whether it's around you in a food service, leadership development pipeline, a program, again, a service or product, this can be applied. So last thing on this one, Is that when this happened, we start to separate what adds value from what creates friction. Let me say that again. We start to separate what adds value. We start— I'm sorry, we start to separate what adds value from what creates friction. So let's get into a practical example with a small business, and then we're going to talk about ministry and leadership development, what it looks like, what it could look like, because again, you do have a unique context. So here's a service business from a customer call all the way to the payment when the payment's accepted. So you see in this chart that the actual work may only be about 3 hours. That's what it's saying. The actual work as a leader, as a manager, it's like, I look, I know that this only takes about 3 hours, but why is it taking around 7 days? That is a huge gap. Like for any, because now you know that your people are not spending as much time on value creation. So that tells me that there's an opportunity, there's an opportunity that may be in waiting. But often what happens is we think people aren't working hard. What did we just say earlier? This is where sometimes leaders as managers, we, the system that we've created is actually choking the life out of good leaders or good workers or— Volunteers or like just people with a servant heart, whatever organization or ministry, whatever we're in, a lot of times it's the system. So we have to ask ourselves, what is the opportunity here? So in this particular chart, we see wait one day, wait like from the call to the estimate, it's waiting from the approval. It's another waiting two days, waiting one day, waiting two days, same day. So again, here it goes. We might say, okay, let's if we're not looking at this value stream mapping, we zone in and we like, okay, let's fix the the. Estimate and approval because why is it taking 1 day, um, for estimates to get to people approving? Hey, approve the estimate. But if we only just focus in on that problem, we might overload scheduling. And then we have all this like schedules like, hey, I can't keep up. These things are coming in too fast and I can't, like, I can't schedule. So now the people that's doing the work, you might think that you need more and more people when that's not the case. So we once again look at the entire system and start talking to different people and come back, and it might be some incremental tweaks throughout the process until we get to that optimal place. Now, this is also a living document because things change. New technologies, new software, new processes, like new products might come into play. So you have to kind of revisit it and make sure that this is a living document. So that's what it tells us is that we We want to make sure that we reduce waste and rework, but we want it to be optimal and not kick the can down the road because we're looking at the whole— the system as a whole. What does it look like for a ministry example with leadership development pipelines? Well, this is actually one of my favorite. So in the context of a ministry, we can apply the same thing, the same thinking that we just talked about when we look at a small business. So example, we may identify good people, But we are to step up and lead, but the communication gets inconsistent. You know, nobody's clear on the next steps. How do we get people in leadership? How do we know that we're developing them? How do we know that they are a leader that fits this context? Like, do they just come in because they have a skill set and now they get frustrated and like, you know, again, things get choked out because it's our process, it's our value stream mapping. Like, we know that action needs to be took, But the next step is unclear. And that's what happens. So we jump in and we'd be like, oh, well, let's make sure that people have clear steps. But we, and then we, you know, we don't do the assessment. Do they fit? Do they, like, do they fit this team? How do we train and shadow them in our context? Have we placed them right? You know, so as a leader, like, oh, we're just not growing. We're not doing things right. Again, it's that value stream mapping. Because again, we can identify good people, but if we don't take the necessary steps to make sure they fit our culture and our context, then we're jacked up. And this map, this map helps us see where development, training, placement, or follow-up breaks down. Again, we're not blaming people. We're just identifying where the system needs clarity. And one of the things I often say as a leader to leaders is that one of the greatest gifts you can give your team is Clarity. It's a clear understand. Be consistent in giving clarity. So that's just one way we can look at it. Again, I know it's multiple streams. This is an oversimplification, but I hope it's just getting those gears going. Hey, we might need to take a step at our system and why we're not spending time on value and value creation and really moving leaders along to be effective within the local church and why we're spending so much time just all over the place and so much confusion. So that's that one. So last but not least, it's simply choosing how to apply. So if I was you, or if I was kind of consulting you or coaching you, I would just pick one process. Again, I would go back and draw out what's really happening, like identify the friction, lean into it, get the real feedback, get holistic feedback, because none of us, no one person sees the whole system. That's what makes us unique as coaches and why we have to really be neutral when we're deploying this process or trying to carry it out. Keep it very simple. If you're not skilled in this area, keep it very simple. You know, use your AI tools, reach out to YouTube videos and just work with it. And then always again, reach out to a coach or a consultant that's, you know, maybe they can help you in this skill in this area. But again, just keep it simple. You don't have to map out the entire organization. Just yet. Just focus on a department that you can experiment with. And then once you get there, when you can see the flow, just know as a leader you can fix the friction. When you can see the flow, you can fix the friction. You know where to kind of lean in and optimize, maybe just for that team. And then once you try and experiment, you might start to deploy it in other streams throughout your organization and things of that, uh, that nature. So Again, you just want to be honest. You want to assess where you really are, identify, start mapping it out, and then you come back together and say, okay, how do we optimize for the entire system? How do we optimize for our entire business? How do we optimize for our entire ministry? How do we optimize for our entire organization or just my everyday life and operations? So that's it. Again, trying to do better with not getting too deep into details. And if this is something that interests you, hey, go to www.timothypratt.org and reach out to me, man, and we'll take it from there. Be blessed.