Going with the Flow Part I: The Scary Big Picture
In the rhythmic cadence of daily operations at Navgar, the creation of Flows for our own team has become both an art and a science. As the Head of Operations, I've witnessed the implementations of meticulously designed Flows that were immediately successful. I’ve seen off the cuff experimentations that worked well, and the occasional stumble from either vantage point. In this series, we’ll take a journey through Navgar's Flows module, unraveling the mysteries of what makes some flows seamlessly integrate into how our small team functions while others drift into the archives of well-intentioned attempts that hopefully fail us forward. While the Navgar Flow module comes preloaded with some examples to get your started, in terms of your priorities it is a blank canvas for you to tailor your operations. The perspectives offered in this and future installments may be helpful or useful to consider and only when you are working hands-on (aided or not with NavgarAI) will you begin to fulfill your own workflow visions.
Understanding Your Objectives and Imperatives
Navgar’s Flows Module was designed in no small part as a prescription to pains our team members had experienced in our previous respective organizations. If you’re already using Navgar, you presumably have at least some use cases for using Flows, if not an orchestrated network of Flows humming in operation. But if you are new to Navgar, you might have slight uncertainty as to where to begin. This will depend greatly on the needs of your business and your own directive style. One valuable first and obvious approach to get started is to make a blue sky expansive list of Flows in Navgar Projects of everything you want Navgar to help you coordinate, the whole kitchen sink. This is great if you have done the thought work and have the blueprints ready in your mind. Or, you can, of course, start small and iterate upon through the process of discovery. This is fantastic for situations where you might have set outcomes in mind but have differing methods you want to consider or test towards getting there. I have serious doubts that any interested user of Navgar has a shortage of operational concerns but I’ve found that brainstorming solo and ordering of needs is a great precursor exercise to methodical implementation, for Flows specific to my domain. This is a path I recommend for Navgar users who have never had the opportunity or toolset for organizing their teams. If you are faltering – and this is okay, an expansive question like “What do you want to do?” can be a quick recipe for your mind going blank – here are some guiding questions that can help you get a foothold.
A first question to consider, letting the heat rise to the top: Are there fires that you anticipate, have occurred or are recurring in the absence of having processes in place to prevent, mitigate, or solve for them entirely? Depending on who you speak to, I have a level of paranoia that varies between healthy and unhealthy, and therefore no shortage of risks identified in my head. Here are a few examples and the shell processes that might de-risk them.
Data Breaches: In the face of a data breach event characterized by unauthorized access to sensitive customer data, the resulting impacts include the loss of customer trust, legal repercussions, and financial losses. To effectively address and mitigate these consequences, organizations should focus on specific flows to solve the issue. Implementing robust cybersecurity protocols, conducting regular audits, and establishing immediate response plans are crucial measures that can help prevent unauthorized access. The responsibility for creating and implementing the flows to prevent data breaches typically falls within the domain of cybersecurity experts, IT professionals, and risk management teams within your organization (as well as Legal and PR, if designing post response efforts). The design of these kinds of Flows is collaborative but for obvious risk implications should be restricted to subject matter experts.
A Key Employee Departure: In the event of an unexpected resignation of a key team member, the repercussions can extend beyond the immediate departure. The impact includes potential disruption in operations, the loss of critical knowledge held by the departing employee, and a potential decrease in overall team morale. To address these challenges, organizations should proactively implement flows to solve the issue. This involves establishing robust succession planning mechanisms to identify and prepare potential replacements, implementing knowledge transfer strategies to ensure a seamless transition of critical information, and launching talent retention initiatives to foster a positive work environment and mitigate the risk of further departures. The responsibility for creating and implementing the flows to solve the challenges associated with a key employee departure typically falls on the shoulders of the Human Resources (HR) department or relevant talent management teams within your organization, but are heavily dependent on individual people managers to complete them.
Customer Complaint Escalation: In the scenario of a customer complaint escalation, the event involves the heightened intensity of a customer grievance resulting from unresolved issues. The impact encompasses negative consequences such as detrimental online reviews, customer attrition, and potential harm to the brand's reputation. To address this, implementing robust customer support protocols, ensuring swift issue resolution, and adopting proactive communication strategies are essential flows to solve the challenges associated with customer complaints and their escalation. The responsibility for creating the flows to solve the challenges related to customer complaint escalation typically falls within the domain of the customer support or service team as this is where they are typically resolved. However, some incidents may have greater severity/impact on a customer group, notoriety, or risk and may involve Legal, Public Relations, Marketing, or other stakeholders creating or involved in the creation of crisis management flows that involve customer escalations and subsequent executions.
The above instances all involve potentially substantial risks to an organization. Having visible plans in place for addressing them not only provides peace of mind for key stakeholders, it also distinguishes your organization as having good governance. Involved parties may have some difference of opinion in how to address them but not their necessity. For this reason, pushing for collaboration and subject matter expertise on high stakes processes is the best way of tackling lit fires. You can’t fight them alone.
Coming Up: We’ll explore the next layer of problems your business faces. Any one of them might not be an existential crisis but accumulated they are death by a thousand cuts.
