I’d like to take a moment and challenge some traditional wisdom.  When working on solving problems within a business many people will claim, “it’s a workflow issue.”. Countless hours are spent documenting “workflows,” developing complex flow charts of data interaction and decision points.  Did you know that no “work” actually happens in a workflow?

Dictionary.com defines workflow as “the flow or amount of work to or from an office, department, or employee.” No where in the definition does it mention doing anything. Let’s use an analogy. Picture a workflow as a river.  Boats travel along the river from port to port, transporting valuable goods to their destinations.  As the boat reaches the port, it moors to the dock and sits there.  Until some one at the dock does some “work” and unloads the boat, the goods might as well have never left their port of call.  It’s the same with business workflows.  You can map the river and ports (workflow) and sail all day long (executing workflows) but until you dock and unload or load, you might as well have stayed home.

Business solutions need to focus on where the work gets done as much if not more than how it flows from point to point.  Document approvals are about getting the approval, not moving the document.  Task management isn’t about creating task lists, it’s about knowing what to get done and doing it.  Idea management isn’t about capturing ideas, it’s about sharing them so the real work can be done.

Next time someone wants to discuss workflow or pulls out a fancy flow chart documenting “workflow” try saying this:

 ”That’s very nice, but how is the work actually getting done?”