Work Simplification

A PRICELESS STORY is told involving a couple of federal agencies which needn’t be named. It seems that some of the staff of one of these agencies felt that the other agency should be informed about decisions on certain topics. Therefore, whenever this agency reached a decision on one of these topics a memorandum describing the decision was prepared in duplicate. The carbon was sent to the second agency and the original was thrown in the wastebasket. Finally, someone took the trouble to scrutinize this peculiar procedure. In the course of his study he called agency number two to see what was done with the carbon. They threw the carbon in the wastebasket.

Another agency had set up an elaborate procedure to deal with applications for employment from the field. Each application was reviewed by several people. As it passed from hand to hand records were kept of its movement for control purposes. Finally, each application reached the files with no action ever being taken. It was an ironclad policy of the department to hire only individuals who applied in person!

Management “Fire Prevention”

Traditionally, efforts at management improvement through conscious attention to machinery of government, administrative costs, and effectiveness of procedures have been the province of some staff office. Teams of “experts” from such offices descend on an area of creaking operations and worry out a better way. This process is known as an administrative survey. Such a survey, however, is watered with blood, sweat, and tears and is not to be undertaken lightly. Therefore, it is generally undertaken only in an emergency, to extinguish a flaming management fire, to deal with problems of reorganization and broad-scale procedural reform. Thus by tradition and by default, “through-the-looking-glass” foibles of management like those described in the foregoing anecdotes get little attention. Yet many people who are familiar with the state of administrative management in the government today feel that the fundamental problem is one of dealing with these chronic and, individually, minor problems, commonly known as “red tape.” Systematic fire prevention work, it is pointed out, can prevent a lot of small fires and reduce materially the risk of conflagrations. Now when anyone throws out a suggestion for management “fire prevention,” he’s sure to get one of two responses:

• “‘Fire prevention’ is OK in principle but we don’t have the manpower these days to do a satisfactory job.”
• “You’re talking theory; its couldn’t be done as a practical matter.”

Well, if every federal employee can be enlisted just as every householder is enlisted by a local fire chief who is directing a fire prevention campaign, the manpower problem will take care of itself. As for how to go about it, the specialists in administrative management are supposed to have some techniques and skills in management analysis. If they don’t, they’ve been traveling under false colors for years. Why not pass this “know how” along? That’s what the fire chief does.

As a matter of fact, a lot of the specialists’ technique would have been put to use by the operating official years ago if he’d been able to understand what the technician was talking about. Therefore whatever is to be passed along must be expressed simply and it must be practical. Another leaf can be taken from the fire chief’s book in that regard. He says, “Oily rags in a stuffy closet may cause a fire. Clean ‘em out.” He doesn’t go into a theoretical discussion of spontaneous combustion or convection at the slightest excuse. No one has to talk doubletalk about management either.

Thinking of this sort has been going on in the United States Bureau of the Budget for some time. It has culminated in the decision to make a concerted drive to capture the best available means for exposing and disposing of common management problems, set it forth in clear, simple language, and put it in the hands of those who can use it to best advantage. And who are they? They are the operating managers of government: middle management people and first line supervisors. The first product of this decision was a checklist called “An Agency Management Program” which identifies important management problem areas which call for attention from all levels of agency management. The second product is the Bureau’s Work Simplification Program. This program is aimed right at the first line supervisor himself. In shaping its program for the simplification of work methods and procedures, the Bureau naturally took advantage of the experience and skill it has within its own walls. But it did not stop there in developing the Work Simplification Program. It went to other civilian agencies of government, to the armed services, and to industry. Much help and perspective were gained from these pilgrimages.

The Work Simplification Program

From the standpoint of the Bureau of the Budget, Work Simplification is a method of attacking the procedural problems of large organizations by equipping first line supervisors with the skill to analyze and improve procedures. It provides a way of tapping the great reservoir of unused practical knowledge represented by this group. In content, it is a program for imparting skill in the use of three techniques of the specialist:

1. The Work Distribution Chart—a device for analyzing division of labor.
2. The Process Chart—a device for analyzing flow of work.
3. The Work Count—a device for interpreting the facts about volume of work in terms of their bearing on method.

In this program, operating agency people who have been instructed in the plan, train agency first-line supervisors to study and solve the basic problems of their own units. Therefore, improvements grow from the “grass roots,” and management obtains results which cannot be achieved in any other way. Supervisors are taught to gather relevant facts quickly, to organize them in simple chart form, and to interpret them properly. Then supervisors take action on improvements within their own units. Proposals for improvement affecting wider areas of the organization are referred to their superiors. Finally, work simplification is not something that supervisors will use only once—a single “shot in the arm.” When the supervisor masters the methods, he can continue to use them as a matter of course in solving his everyday work problems.

A word may be said about the reason for selecting these three techniques. First, they had been tested on a large scale by the Army Quartermaster Corps and paid big dividends. Second, they are best adapted to meet the needs of the customer for whom the program was designed, the first-line supervisor. Third, they are most relevant to the problems of the federal service today. It should be noted that these are techniques for dealing with the procedural problems of a single operating unit. Since the first-line supervisor was the customer, obviously techniques for improving practices cutting across organization lines were not appropriate subject matter.

Note also that these are techniques for improving procedures, that is, group activities, rather than operations—the work of individual workers. At present untold work needs to be done to improve procedures, to effect logical division of labor, and to streamline work flow. Until these problems are solved the continuing waste of energy that is rooted in faulty processes hardly warrants giving attention to operator analysis, motion economy, or whatever you wish to call the study of work habits of the individual employee.

It was decided to concentrate on Work Simplification, that is, streamlining paper work, as one of the first steps in the Bureau’s program. This was felt to be an area which needed attention at once. It is not hard to make a case for this point of view. For instance, the federal government writes 300,000,000 checks, audits 80,000,000 vouchers, and sends 1,530,000,000 letters in a single year. These figures spell big business—business which must be transacted with dispatch during the war especially, and during the critical period which will follow the war. Moreover, increased demands upon government agencies, coupled with manpower shortages that make it doubly hard to satisfy those demands, have multiplied the problems of production and procedure which face each agency. Thus, it is obvious that war will leave a residue of old, unsolved management problems. Furthermore, it stands to reason that reconversion will bring new demands and new adjustments which will create new administrative problems. Government must be “tooled up” to handle them, too.

The Bureau of the Budget’s Work Simplification Program is in part a training program, but it is more than that. It is an action program as well. It is true that supervisors are taught to use three devices for analyzing procedural problems. However, the cycle is not complete when the supervisors have merely mastered the use of the techniques. Every supervisor in each training group should successfully apply the techniques to the work of his office and come up with an improvement which is good enough to be adopted and installed.

This is an extremely important feature of the program. It immediately produces a dividend—a saving in time, money, and manpower—thereby earning continuing support from the top management of the agency concerned. Equally important, with a success story on his record each supervisor is stimulated to continue to apply these techniques to his work problems. In the long run, it is this continued application of the analytical approach which will produce the really big dividends in improved federal management.

Inasmuch as the first step was to train, considerable thought and attention were given to training methods at an early stage in the development of the program. Since it was necessary to transmit a skill, a training method which would permit maximum active participation by the trainee during the training period was selected. The training is done through an alternation of conference work with on-the-job practice.

The Training Conferences

To increase the effectiveness of the conference periods, visual training aids were developed. These took the form of a “foldover” or “standing easel” type of presentation consisting of a set of two-color charts.

Posters emphasizing, through pictures and slogans, the points it is desired to drive home at various stages of the training process. These posters—80 in number—are shown to the trainees and are accompanied by lectures and discussion.¹

A preliminary set of posters entitled, “Meet Yourself” is used at the first meeting of each training group to introduce the course. This presentation and the talk which accompanies it are designed to stimulate a desire to learn and to provide a quick preview of the field to be covered by the course. This session emphasizes the importance of the supervisor’s job in the scheme of things, stresses the benefits of work simplification to him and to his agency, and defines for him the work distribution chart, the process chart, and the work count.

Charting Work Distribution

At the very first session the trainee is plunged into the subject of work distribution charting. He realizes, therefore, that some solid work is involved, that this is not just some more evangelism. Another foldover presentation devoted to work distribution charting aids in telling this story. A work distribution chart, a sample of which is shown on page 21, is not difficult to construct. It is a simple tabulation of the various tasks performed by the several employees of an organization unit classified according to a listing of the major activities of that unit. Time spent by employees on each task is indicated. When this chart has been completed it is therefore possible to add up the total manhours spent on each major activity. Sometimes the result comes as quite a surprise to a supervisor and he immediately discovers any misdirected effort, such as undue emphasis on activities which are of minor importance in relation to the main job.

The function of the work distribution chart is to probe the soundness of the existing division of labor. It shows up failures to delegate, for instance, and cases of waste of critical skills through assignment of routine duties to professional employees who never seem to have time to get their important jobs done. It detects those jacks-of-all-trades who, through no fault of their own, work themselves to death yet fail to make any impression on the work piled high in front of them. And it shows who is overworked and who is underemployed.

While it is easy to teach the mechanics of constructing a work distribution chart, analysis of the completed chart calls for considerable skill. Consequently, most attention is devoted to analysis. This is taught by the case method. The training aid contains a completed work distribution chart in which are “planted” numerous examples of bad division of labor. The trainees are taught to identify these examples and the management principles they violate.

Process Charting

The conference sessions on the process chart and the work count follow a similar pattern. For each of these techniques there is an accompanying visual aid. The mechanics of process charting are slightly more difficult to learn than work distribution charting. The process chart is a device for tracing and highlighting work flow. To make such a chart it is first necessary to identify an office procedure involving a number of steps in sequence. Usually a form, a paper, a case or other office medium is selected to be followed through the several steps in processing it. In some cases it may be the steps performed by a single individual that are recorded. In either event the steps are recorded in order on a special form which is provided for the purpose.

This form, a completed illustration of which appears on page 31, is divided into two sections. The right hand section provides space for entry of a brief description of each step. In the left hand section a set of symbols is printed. These symbols assist the charter to see at a glance just what steps are taking place during a work process. They are the sign language of process charting.

In the use of this form, when something is being changed, created, or added to (a letter typed, for example) a large circle is used to show that an action or an operation is taking place. When something is moved from one place to another, such as a letter carried to another desk, a small circle is used to show transportation. When something remains in one place waiting further action, such as a letter in an “outgoing” box, a triangle is used to indicate storage. When something is checked or verified but not changed, as in proofreading a letter, a square is used to denote an inspection.

A master process chart is a part of the visual aid material on this subject. It contains examples of duplicated effort, backtracking, and other work flow difficulties. This material is based on actual cases involving familiar procedures. The method of teaching the analysis of a process chart is the same as the one followed in dealing with work distribution charting. The trainees learn to recognize cases of poor work flow, why they are bad, and what the proper solution may be.

Work Counting

Teaching the work count presented the most difficult problem of all. It is necessary in teaching this technique to create an awareness of the extent to which the volume of an operation influences the choice of the method by which it is to be performed. Attention is given to the fact that both the work distribution chart and the process chart are static representations of conditions.

Chart point to activities with respect to which a work count should be made. For example, a long storage time or delay at one step in a procedure will be highlighted by a process chart. Perhaps a work count at this point will reveal a volume situation which requires that additional manpower be used to expedite the flow. Or it may reveal that the volume is not excessive and the delay is due to poorly trained employees. The work distribution chart may raise a question about the desirability of specialization in handling a certain piece of work. Here, too, the facts about volume will provide a sound basis for decision.

A set of case histories is the basic teaching material for this part of the course. These are also represented in the visual materials. Each case history illustrates a specific type of management problem on which volume facts will shed light. It is pointed out that knowledge of volume is essential in planning job content, classifying work for special treatment, and stimulating employee interest in the work. As each case history is reviewed, trainees are encouraged to mention cases from their own experience in which work count facts might have been useful as a basis for improving methods. The trainer spends some time in considering these points with the group.

The mechanics of work counting are not susceptible to expression in simple chart form. Consequently during the discussion period the trainer does no more than suggest the multitude of things in an office that can be profitably counted: letters, inquiries, postings, vouchers, telephone calls, etc. He also points out examples of the many ways of counting: by tallying, weighing, measuring, through the use of serially numbered forms, etc. Ability to make the work count is developed by the supervisor in the on-the-job practice period which follows the discussion session.

On-The-Job Training

Practice periods, as previously mentioned, are alternated with discussion periods. This process conforms to the following pattern. After the discussion of work distribution charting, the supervisors are given several days to collect data about the division of labor in their own offices. They prepare a list of the major activities of their unit and secure a task list—a simple statement of duties performed—from each employee. Then, at the end of the third day after the discussion period, they meet with the trainer, individually or in small groups, and he helps them organize their data in proper work distribution chart form. Some effort may be spent in analysis at this time to “alert” the supervisor to opportunities for improvement revealed in his chart.

Following the discussion period on process charting, a similar practice period on process charting is scheduled. During the time interval between the discussion and this practice period the supervisors trace several important procedures through their offices and make notes of each step. Hints as to the procedures to trace are given by the work distribution chart, which shows how many manhours are devoted to the various processes in the office. Supervisors naturally pick the most time-consuming process to chart. At the practice period the trainer assists them in recording the data on the process chart form and teaches the use of the symbols which identify the character of each step. Again, possibilities for improvement are discussed in a preliminary way.

Following the discussion of work counting, the trainer visits each supervisor in his own office for the work count practice period. In this way he gets the feel of the environment, sees the forms that are used, the records that are kept, and the media which move. He is thus able to assist in identifying the significant things to count—a very important consideration in using this technique.

A final session is held after all discussions and practice periods are past. At this time the supervisors use all three of the tools to work out an installable improvement of some phase of the operations of their offices. They are encouraged to postpone coming to any conclusions about the practicability of a potential improvement until they have seen the results obtained through the use of all three devices, for each tends to shed additional light on the basic problem. Hence, improvement based on all three analytical approaches is bound to be sounder and more far reaching than that based on only one or two. In the final session the trainer gives each supervisor what help he can. In every case, however, he must assure himself that each supervisor has been able to formulate a definite improvement which, perhaps after refinement, will be installable.

Pamphelt Materials

In the development of another feature of the program a leaf was taken from the book of the sidewalk salesman. His rule is that to make a sale you must “first tell ‘em what you’re going to tell ‘em; tell ‘em; and then tell ‘em what you’ve told ‘em.” The introductory visual presentation of the first session covers the first point. The actual “telling” is represented by the discussion periods on the three devices and by the visual aids used in them. Apropos of the third, three pamphlets—one devoted to each technique—were prepared. They are called respectively:

• The Supervisor’s Guide to the Work Distribution Chart (See pages 19-26)
• The Supervisor’s Guide to the Process Chart (See pages 27-34)
• The Supervisor’s Guide to the Work Count (See pages 35-42)

At the end of each discussion session, the appropriate pamphlet is distributed to the supervisors. By this means the trainer is better able to secure the undivided attention of his audience, as note taking becomes unnecessary. This device also assures an accurate record of the materials for the trainee.

The Bureau’s plan for disseminating this program created the need for a fourth pamphlet, entitled the Trainer’s Guide to Work Simplification (see pages 11-18). This is a handbook containing suggestions about the conduct of the discussion and practice sessions, and is designed for the guidance of any one intending to train a group of supervisors. It covers such points as scheduling, physical arrangements requiring attention, and suggestions for making the best use of the visual aids.

Inasmuch as the Bureau had a rather small staff to commit to this program and interest in the program on the part of other agencies of government seemed keen, a plan to provide for additional trainers had to be evolved. As the program now operates, the Bureau undertakes to train a group of trainers for any agency in which it is desired to launch the program. This group then trains the supervisors of that agency. The Bureau staff renders standby assistance during the time the agency trainers are handling their first group of supervisors in order to observe the way in which the trainers perform and to suggest means for improvement. At the end of this standby period Bureau staff is available for periodic consultation, but the agency group assumes the load. The Trainer’s Guide is useful in the training of the agency trainer group, but it becomes particularly important as a reminder about key points in the program at the time the agency group takes command of the operation.

Since the top management officials of any organization which undertakes a program of this kind hold the key to its success, they came in for their share of attention during its development. The story of what was deemed to be the proper role of top management was set down in an additional pamphlet Specifications for an Agency Work Simplification Program (see pages 7-10). This pamphlet emphasizes two points: that top management must give hearty public support to such an undertaking if it expects results, and that it should appoint its own representative to follow the progress of the program. It stresses above all that management must launch such an enterprise only on the basis of a complete knowledge and acceptance of its cost. The cost is adequate staff assistance and at least twelve hours of the time of the supervisors who participate.

While this is a supervisor’s program, staff assistance is necessary to train the supervisor. Most important of all is the need for effective handling of suggestions which a supervisor who has been trained in work simplification inevitably makes about phases of agency operations which lie just beyond his immediate unit. These suggestions can become an extra management improvement dividend or they can become the shoal on which the whole effort founders. In both industry and government supervisor’s programs have run aground where top management has failed to do its share in management improvement. Staff assistance enables it to hold up its end.

The Work Simplification Program of the Bureau of the Budget is now in operation. While it will be pushed with vigor, those identified with the program have not lost sight of the fact that it represents a step in the right direction—not the end of the trail.