THE UNNATURAL “NATURE OF THE INDUSTRY”, PART 2

Last post we dove deeper into The 12 Intervention Points in a System and reviewed the ineffectiveness of the most commonly used intervention points (12, 11, 10) to address staffing issues and how these weak interventions perpetuate the cycle of overworked and (ironically) overstaffed teams.

We then analyzed how applying Intervention 9: The lengths of delays relative to the rate of system change, begins to actually solve the problem.

In this post, we will dive deeper into the remaining intervention points in order to further strengthen the solution to staffing woes in eDiscovery…

Applying Intervention 9: The lengths of delays relative to the rate of system change, begins to solve the issue of matching staff to peaks and valleys through the use of checklists and supporting documentation in order to reduce the delay of onboarding times.

Now, let’s build upon our previous solution utilizing Intervention 9 and see how we can augment it through the application of feedback loops. We’ll begin by creating a continuous improvement program with negative feedback loops, and then jumpstart the impact of this approach through the additional application of positive feedback loops.

8. The strength of negative feedback loops, relative to the impacts they are trying to correct against

Before we start, a quick reminder that negative feedback loops may invoke the idea of a negative result, but that is not the case: in very simple terms, a negative feedback loop means that if there is more of one thing, then there is less of another; and inversely, if there is less of one thing, then there is more of another. For example, utilizing checklists and supporting documentation via Intervention 9 made the team more efficient and as a result there were less hours being worked.

Now, let’s look at the structure of a negative feedback loop. A negative feedback loop is composed of a goal, a monitoring and signaling device to detect excursions from the goal, and a response mechanism. The goal is what the feedback loop is driving to; the monitoring and signaling device is how we tell if we are on track or off track as we head toward the goal; and the response mechanism is how we correct course if necessary.

Let’s apply strategic thinking and start with our end point: the goal. At Intervention 9 we created a set of checklists and supporting documentation to reduce onboarding times for new hires as well as for team members from other teams within the organization that are pulled into a project. Intervention 9 teased at a goal but didn’t directly address it: the goal was the elimination of errors — that’s ZERO mistakes — by following the checklist to ensure individuals do every step, and reading the supporting documentation so that every step is done correctly.

The next step is to create the monitoring and signaling device. The defined goal is to eliminate errors, so every task has to be monitored in order to catch every opportunity for error. This is commonly implemented via quality control steps in a workflow. And since the checklists are in place and used every time, we can leverage this intervention point by simply integrating the quality control steps into the checklists. The resulting signal from this monitoring action is a notification to a team member to fix the identified error. This then sets off the response mechanism, which is to fix the error that occurred during the workflow. Integration of quality control into the checklists drives compliance towards meeting the goal, and results in increased rates of error resolution. This is a step in the right direction… but what if we could eliminate the errors before they happened?

Developing a preventative monitoring and signaling device doesn’t require prescience, it simply requires proper planning: in addition to monitoring in order to identify and fix the current issue, preventative monitoring includes a log of every error. As the error log collects the inputs from monitoring, trends and patterns will develop which — via an analysis of the log — will signal the cause of the errors. The response mechanism is the removal of the identified error(s) from the checklist and/or documentation: once these assets are updated, the identified error has been proactively eliminated and thus will not occur again. This proactive approach continuously refines the checklists until errors are no longer present. And just like that, this set of monitoring/signal/response actions via a negative feedback loop results in the elimination of errors before they occur; this is also known as a continuous improvement program, a concept I’ve covered previously.

Through building a continuous improvement program that proactively eliminates errors, we are able to significantly increase the strength of the negative feedback loop associated with our checklists and supporting documentation. At Intervention 9 we reduced onboarding time for new hires and team members so they could more readily help a team facing an elevated workload. Now, by utilizing Intervention 8 and the strength of negative feedback loops relative to the impacts they are trying to correct against, we are able to augment the checklists and supporting documentation via a continuous improvement program.

Pretty cool, right?

Ok, time to kickstart the impact of our work!

7. The gain around driving positive feedback loops

It should come as no surprise that a positive feedback loop behaves in the opposite manner of a negative feedback loop: for a positive feedback loop, if there is more of one thing, then it leads to more of another thing; and inversely, if there is less of one thing, then there is less of another. For example, the more time savings a team realizes will result in more time to help other teams. Whereas a negative feedback loop drives to a defined point (the goal), a positive feedback loop creates a compounding effect that drives exponentially greater and greater impact in a given direction over time.

Let’s finish the time savings loop example immediately above: the more time savings a team realizes will result in more time to help other teams; resulting in more opportunity to create additional time savings, resulting in the more time savings a team realizes. Which is really, really great. However, being a self-reinforcing loop, there can also be a dark side to positive feedback loops: the less time savings a team realizes, the less time to help other teams, resulting in less opportunity to create time savings, leading to less time savings, and so on… but compounding effects can’t go on forever — not in this world, anyway — so what stops it?

Every positive feedback loop will eventually activate a negative feedback loop. For example, there are only so many teams in an organization. Because of this cap on teams, there are two possibilities of a negative feedback loop that can be activated: the first negative feedback loop being the more team members helping, the less team members there are available to help with the goal of this negative feedback loop being that there are no team members available to help, because they are all actively working; the second negative feedback loop is the more team members helping, the less work is available to be done with the goal of this negative feedback loop being that there is no available work to be done. The former is where overworking comes from — an undesirable effect — while the latter is how load balancing happens — a desirable effect.

The key to Intervention 7 is identifying how best to activate positive feedback loops that create the desired compounding effect (load balancing) or deactivate an undesirable effect (overworking). This is where the checklist and supporting documentation integrate into this intervention and start to make a real impact: the negative feedback loop we built in the previous intervention point drives toward the goal of elimination of errors; the elimination of errors leads to less rework and as a result more time savings (remember, negative feedback means less leads to more); which in turn kicks off the time savings loop at the more time savings input and as a result, the self-reinforcing pattern continues in the desirable direction.

We can further drive the gains of this positive feedback loop through encouraging adoption across more teams, which increases the amount of people participating in the time savings loop. As the numbers increase, two things will occur: the first is the increase in participation increases the more time savings a team realizes and bolsters that loop — a simple and straightforward result, but still powerful; the second is the more usage of the checklist and supporting documentation results in more errors from using the checklist and supporting documentation. Now, you might start seeing red flags in regards to ‘the more error’ portion of that interaction, but keep in mind that the continuous improvement program we created at Intervention 8 takes the input of error and proactively eliminates that error. Applying the compounding effects of a positive feedback loop shows us that the quicker we proactively eliminate the errors, the quicker we have an error free approach.

By leveraging Intervention 8: The strength of negative feedback loops, relative to the impacts they are trying to correct against” to create a continuous improvement program, and then tapping into the compounding effects of Intervention 7: The gain around driving positive feedback loops, we’ve created a one-two feedback loop punch. This is a great start, but I think we can dive deeper into the intervention points to continue to augment the approach for even more impact…

Check in next time for how we can leverage Intervention 6: The structure of information flows to continue flatten the peaks and valleys of eDiscovery.