Discombobulated UnionBank

I had to deposit at UnionBank in Shaw, Pasig City today. I took my number (62 in the queue) and discovered that the teller was currently processing #52. Good I thought. Just 10 people before me. It was 12:00 pm. There was only one teller serving us. My number said "Single Transactions," meaning, this was their express lane.

By 12:20, I still wasn't served. The lone teller was only processing #53. More customers were arriving since this was lunch time.

Then a second teller arrived at 12:30. Good, I thought. The second teller started calling and processing 54, then 55. Then she stopped and started doing something else. She and the other teller even had the gall to engage in light banter with customer 54 who apparently they knew.

So now, both tellers were doing something else, in front of the queue of customers, oblivious. The manager appeared three times, only to get some papers from the tellers, also oblivious.

Customers beside me were sleeping, tolerant of what was happening. This is very Pinoy. But I hadn't eaten and I needed to be elsewhere and my process improvement skills were screaming in my head.

By 12: 50, I've had enough. I approached the manager and asked if they had no express lane and that I've waited for almost an hour. The manager, to her credit, apologized and gave an excuse that they were processing too many checks. I was going to retort, "I don't care about your checks, just process my deposit." But I stifled it since she offered me a solution. She said she'd just take my deposit, issue me a receipt and have it processed by today. I agreed and left.

Clearly, the management at this particular branch had no regard for its customers. Since it was lunch break, the disregard was all the more pronounced. I am sure many of the customers waiting in line had not eaten lunch.

Lessons for bank managers:

• Observe the arrival of customers especially at peak hours like lunch and coffee break.
• If a line gets longer than 3 people, then get the other tellers to help. (In fact, there were more tellers at the back, just chatting up people at New Accounts.)
• Assign batch tasks (processing several transactions) to tellers hidden from the customer's view. It is atrocious to make tellers do these unrelated tasks right in front of the customers waiting in line. Probably, the tellers at New Accounts should have been assigned the batch tasks instead.
• Focus on the customers and the flow of transactions. 
• UnionBank in this branch had about 20 chairs occupying most of the space. If anything, this is a sign that your processing time for each customer is too long such that you have to provide seats for this number of customers!

Process Management to Assist Government of Bohol

The Government of Bohol is intent on improving its services and it has sought the help of many experts in various fields. I'm helping them through process management: customer focus, process focus and continuous quality/process improvement (which involves process redesign). Let me jot down what I've been working with them in terms of process design.

My part on this is just a small one. There is a larger project that aims to reorganize the whole provincial government. It requires change management and reengineering. I was asked to help the change team to understand process management as one guide post for the reorganization.

The intervention chosen for me was through a series of workshops and consultations. My training partners asked me to give a 3-day workshop for the office heads, and a 1-day overview workshop for their key staff. The goal of the workshops was to let them become more process-oriented and to let them experience how to map, analyze and improve core business processes.

We connected their personal experiences on customer service to their own workplace. We taught them the value of customer delight. They learned about business pain and how it hints at the urgency to improve processes. When we concluded the workshop, we gave them assignment to continue mapping their core processes and suggesting how to improve them. It was tedious but fruitful as they started seeing their function from a process-oriented perspective.

Many of the sharp ones already started having insights on how to improve their office systems.

My next session came after two weeks. I flew in for three days of consultation. They gave me a table in the change management team's room at the Provincial Capitol. Office heads and staff came and showed their homework to me. A fraction of them obviously did not listen or did not care to listen in the workshops, since they submitted shoddy work. But many of them came up with nice, neat process maps. The sharp ones submitted excellent improvement proposals. You could really see that process thinking helped them gain deeper insights into management.

Today is the last day of the consultations. I am sitting at Brewpoint, which is the cafe of my impressive but inexpensive hotel (Soledad Suites). Tomorrow I'll go sight-seeing -- visiting the Chocolate Hills for the first time and am bent on meeting a tarsier too. I'll be missing this place but I'll plan to come back. Next time, I'll bring my wife and go to Balicasag to watch dolphins and whales.

Bohol needs a new airport

It was my first time to visit Bohol. I am working with the heads of the provincial capitol to help them improve their business processes and align them with their strategy. Here's what I noticed on the airport (see photos, below).

As you can see from the pictures, the airport badly needs expanding. It was packed with passengers of PAL and Cebu Pacific.

Interestingly, when I checked in, the PAL plane I was supposed to board was already there, still being loaded with baggage. Here's the interesting contrast: Cebu Pacific arrived a bit later but left earlier than PAL.

Another thing I noticed: Bohol is very proactive in promoting tourism. They have some things in place, but much need to be improved further. I hope the project of which I'm a part may be able to help improve the services, just a wee bit better.

Standardizing the Prosecution System (Department of Justice)

Here are pictures of my recent work. This time, it's with the Department of Justice. I'm helping them standardize and improve their basic procedures for filing cases and complaints.

It turns out that in all these years, among all the prosecutor's offices, there was really no standard way to file cases and complaints.

I can validate this because several years back, a bus rammed into my car and I had to go through the process of filing a case. There would be days when the judge, the accused or I would not be available. Every time this happened, we had to postpone the hearing for another month. There were no options to allow us to find a closer, synchronized date. I've never heard from that case again.

I had no idea what the steps where and there was no Information Desk. Lack of clarity on processes is a fertile breeding ground for corruption. ('Nuff said).

Flash forward to today. DOJ is embarking on a project to change this. It set up a Technical Working Group (TWG) composed of senior prosecutors (aka senior fiscals) who put their heads together and steadily built the manuals from scratch. Then I reviewed the flowcharts they drew to describe their system. I also helped revise and simplify the manual that will be distributed to the administrative staff.

In revising the Administrator's Manual, the Technical Working Group asked me to simplify it further to a point where anyone can understand the steps.

Problems and realities:

• Shortage of staff in the prosecutor's offices.
  
• When they do have staff, the staff lacked the needed skills (eg computer skills, filing skills -- yes, lack of filing skills for staff who are supposed to do filing work, go figure).
  

Lessons I Learned about Government Employees:

• There are nice, hardworking government employees who are genuinely pushing for change (In most government agencies I've worked with, I've seen this pattern).
• These people are very driven, in spite of the general perception against government employees.
• In the DOJ TWG, for instance, they worked from 8:30 am until 7:30 pm for FIVE DAYS STRAIGHT. Meals and snacks were served while working. And this was not easy work -- the members had to read through each sentence to check the legality and fix loopholes.
• Despite being very driven, the fiscals and DOJ staff were actually fun to work with. They were very efficient and pleasant. We debated heatedly about the contents, but everything was kept at a professional level.
  

Lessons I Learned about Improving Processes:

• First, concentrate on mapping the whole process, from process start to finish. See the big picture first (by using boxes-and-arrows diagrams).
• Follow the steps and not the people. In DOJ, the first draft of the manual tended to follow the specific staff who were assigned to do each step. This led to dense sentences that were difficult to follow. It took me a couple of days to read through the intricacies. In the end, I simplified this by focusing on the steps, not the people.
• One sentence, one step. In the first draft of the manual, a step was often 2-3 steps subsumed in one sentence. I disaggregated these complex sentences and improved the readability of the manual.
  
• Rule of thumb: make sure that the first word of a step is a verb. (If you need to put the person who is responsible for the step, you can add this later.)
  
• Avoid complicated flowchart symbols. When drawing flowcharts, use boxes and arrows. Avoid additional "computer-based" symbols like diamonds, printouts, etc. They only add to the confusion.
  

The Design IQ of MRT

The lowest design IQ in the universe must be concentrated in the management offices of MRT (aka, LRT-3 or the EDSA light rail). A visit to MRT especially in rush hour is a lesson on how Bad Design can cause you more stress:

• Trains break down, forcing huge human traffic jams.
  
• Long queues at the ticket booths, winding all the way down the stairs and spill out into EDSA. People here can wait as long as 30 minutes or more.
  
• And after the long ticket lines -- you have to line up for bag inspection, causing another 30 minute wait.
• More time lost inside the station as you wait for a train to arrive.
• All this time, no one is announcing if a train will be coming or what time.
• And when the train finally arrives, there's no room to squeeze in, which makes you wonder why the train bothered to stop.
  

What Works

In other train stations (like in Bangkok, Australia, Europe and even in our own LRT-2 -- note, I include LRT-2, or the Aurora line), riding the train is a smooth and stress-free experience. We list things that work in these stations.

Ticket Machines

The good stations use automated vending machines to dispense tickets. There is often a window with a human, but only to give out change, special tickets, or information.

Wide Passageways and Cars

The other train stations have very wide passageways so human traffic flows more freely and crowds do not accumulate. The cars also have wider bodies, designed for lots of commuters to move around in. Not so in MRT, where cars are small and cramped. This is why people in MRT are always packed like a Brother Mike service.

Lots of Information and Maps for Passengers

Station names are prominent and announced clearly by a recorded message. If you're on the street and you don't know anything about the area, you will see prominent signs indicating a train station. Schedules are published on video screens and even announced through a PA system so people don't wander about, wondering whether a train will ever come. Plus, they have maps showing the train stations and the vicinity. If there are different train lines, the map gives useful info on how to get to the other lines. (Instead of bombarding us with too many ads, why won't MRT ask these advertisers to sponsor maps of the MRT?)

Special Passes

Special passes help decongest human traffic in the ticket booths and give a more convenient option for customers. In the countries described above, you could purchase special tickets or "passes" -- a day-long pass allows you to ride all day long. A weekly pass lets you use your ticket for 7 days, and so on. Like prepaid cards, you can easily recharge these special tickets.

What Ails the MRT?

I used to wonder why problems plague the MRT. After some years of observing, I have figured out some design flaws in their system(s).
The main stations and terminals (North EDSA, Quezon Ave, Makati, Taft) have bad real estate designs:

• Narrow passageways and waiting areas. At North EDSA station, which receives almost all of people from the North, there is only one narrow stairway, a slow and hot elevator and 2-4 ticket windows. Same is true with Quezon Ave. Since there is too much human traffic in the first two northern stations of MRT, people often try to go as far as the GMA-Kamuning station or do a "round trip". All these are symptoms of the trouble that MRT is experiencing, and still, nothing is being done to alleviate the bottlenecks!
  
• Slow ticket dispensing. All tickets in MRT are dispensed by humans, and most of the time they fumble as they count change. Why not activate those vending machines that I saw rotting in the corners of the station?
• MRT has stored value cards -- the closest we can get to special passes from other countries. But such is the ineptitude of MRT management that they still run out of stored value cards! I suspect that MRT "runs out" only because... they are waiting for those silly Samsung ads to be printed on them!
  
• Useless and slow bag security checks. In Ayala, there are many turnstiles to accommodate traffic, but inept management introduced a choke point -- a baggage check with two guards intercepting everyone entering the turnstiles. Imagine how many office workers are pouring into the station, only to be choked by two guards. I believe that baggage checks are useless deterrents to terrorist attacks (any sufficiently motivated criminal or terrorist will think of a way to outsmart these inattentive guards, anyway. What if they instead let everyone enter the waiting area, and then the guards could conduct random checks in the train waiting area?
  
• Several times, I have been stuck inside the Shaw station's waiting area (longest was for one hour), waiting for a train that never arrived. I felt helpless and duped, since they could have advised us in the first place that there was a problem. No one told us what was happening. To top it all the place was hot, because the architects never paid attention to ventilation design. People were about to riot. In contrast, Bangkok's SkyTrain stations are all open to let the breeze cool the area naturally.
  

When we are voiceless and misinformed (most of us Pinoys are), we tend to be more tolerant of bad service design. Thanks to the LRT-2 (the Aurora line) we are given a taste of a better alternative. You should try getting a ride at the LRT-2

It's been how many years now since we started encountering these MRT problems? Things do not seem to be improving. The only innovation I have seen so far was the introduction of a cordoned area for women, children and senior citizens. But this is not a solution to the root problems. This is merely cosmetic. Things will worsen if MRT management does not examine more closely what's happening.

I don't think the solutions will be difficult to find. If someone like me who knows nothing about crowd control and train systems can make these observations, what more these experts at MRT? Or do they really know what they're doing over there?

Links:

• MRT described in Urban Rail: http://www.urbanrail.net/as/mani/manila.htm
• Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manila_Light_Rail_Transit_System
  

Improving the DOH Retirement Process

Just got back from the Department of Health, after giving a workshop and mentoring session. Our goal: help a cluster of the KM team to use some knowledge sharing techniques to improve their retirement process.

We began by defining the process start and ending, then started using Post-Its to write down the steps. After lining them up in the whiteboard and drawing arrows (thus the boxes-and-arrows process map), the team really got deeply into the discussion. The team was so engaged that they did not even think of pausing for lunch.

Despite asking people to stop thinking about the process while eating lunch, discussions continued. Our session at 1:30 PM and I have a feeling people would have stayed and worked on the project had it not been for the order from DOH to go home. Everyone went home having a deep sense of fulfillment.


We examined each step and bounced around ways to improve them. I liked the openness of the people to accept ideas. Everyone let everyone to finish what they were saying before any critiques were given.

To be honest, I was a bit unsure whether we would get substantial results since it appeared that a previous process improvement effort had already been done -- in fact, the cluster came armed with a neat list of steps, complete with input and output, plus flowcharts.

But when they started stepping through the process map and comparing it to what was happening in reality, new stuff came out. I gave them guide questions like, "What common errors or complaints do you receive?" and "Are there bottlenecks or points of delay in the procedures?"

After lengthy discussions, the KM team had a list of improvements to the DOH retirement process, two of which would result to major impact. First, a simpler, more efficient process, by decreasing points of mistakes and causes of delay. Second, an insertion of a knowledge harvest process for key retiring staff. This was a very fulfilling day for us, despite the rain and the flood that I had to drive through to get back home. Thanks to the DOH process improvement team!

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More photos here: http://www.zooomr.com/photos/rubencanlas/sets/21709/