Back in D.C. this week

I’m back in Washington this week doing work for HUD.  With the current environment of the housing market HUD is expecting their business volume to explode.  The problems with Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac is driving business to HUD.  This, combined with recent legislation to assist homeowners with troubled mortgages, has raised concerns within the agency that their current business processes will not be able to effectively service the increased volume.  The consulting company that I work for, along with our partner, have been hired to re-engineer some of their critical internal processes.  I am supporting a lady who is facilitating these business changes and a giant in the industry of Lean Business Process.  Lean follows the principals laid down by Toyota and Henry Ford. It’s purpose is to eliminate waste in the form of unnecessary and/or non-value added process steps and focuses on only the essential steps.  As an example, one of the processes that was being re-engineered required 23 review/approval signatures.  After the team analyzed and re-engineered the process only 3 signatures were required!

For 15 years I have been a consultant implementing finance software systems.  One of the most frustrating things about going into a new client’s business to implement a system has been seeing all of the broken BUSINESS processes and not being able to make the smart changes.  We would point out that, “Well, if you changed x or y in the way you do business not only would it benefit the implementation of this $2 million software that you just purchased but guess what, you probably wouldn’t need the software.”  Of course we couldn’t say that exactly but when we did elude to it we were met with, “Oh, we can’t change that, you are here to implement the software, not change the way we do things.”  The Lean process is different.  With Lean we facilitate meetings that help the business process owners see their broken business processes and re-engineer to processes that eliminate wasted, non-value added activities in day to day operations.

This experience has also helped me with my photography business.  Lean focuses on the customer.  By making my own business streamlined and not wasting energy on inefficient tasks I have been able to free time to devote to taking care of my customers.

It was a little grey in D.C. today but after leaving the office I walked by the White House to snap a few pictures.  Here’s one from the front lawn.