Before you Automate: Audit
Excitement for automation reached a fever pitch at our Lunch and Learn this week. We shared the fears we have overcome about automation, the conditions that support effective automation, and the ultimate goal of automation. We don’t automate to automate; we automate to achieve our goals more efficiently.
Like any other new competency, incorporating automation into your organization’s operations has to start with a clear connection to your mission. How does shifting tasks from human- to machine-managed contribute to your organization’s mission?
Efficiently creates an output that contributes to your operations
Free up staff time to work on projects that require human attention
Save the frustration, boredom, and potential for error that comes with humans doing the same tasks over and over
Experience the well-being of a human who isn’t worried she’ll forget to to the thing that she is supposed to do correctly and on time
We also talked about the reasons automation might not be right (or just right now) for your organization.
You don’t have a reliable process or resources to take human judgment out of the job
Your organization’s culture doesn’t support process innovation, or new practices in general
You don’t have the budget to support the level of technology and support it would take to automate a process
Doing things the long way helps you learn them better, which helps with later steps in your process
You are up to your armpits in the day-to-day, and zooming out to make decisions and changes to support automation might literally kill you.
Wherever you are in your thinking about adding automation, try taking a moment to assess where you are right now with an Automation Audit. It’s not hard, it’s 100% made up, and it can be the discovery section of an Automation plan!
Audit Questions:
What processes are already automated? Want to know what automation your organization will tolerate? Start by investigating what already exists with questions like:
Why was this process automated?
Who made the decision to automate?
Who set up the automation?
How is automation checked, maintained, and updated?
What technologies are already being used to facilitate automation?
How has this automation changed the human/department that implemented it?
What does our organization react to? Generally, systems that are automated have an external trigger, whether it is someone clicking submit on a contact form, a new donation coming in, or just a specific day happening in a month or year. So when thinking about how automation can expand from the current uses, ask questions like:
What is on to-do lists every week, month, quarter, etc. that stays mostly the same?
What makes me feel like a machine when someone asks me to do it for them?
What communications, reports, data sets, calculations, are 70% or more the same every time you do them?
What has to happen for our organization to stay compliant and
How does our organization navigate change? Automating a process comes with some risk. While doing something once instead of a thousand times has some appeal, worrying that you did it a little wrong that one time, with a thousand receipts of your error in the inboxes or feeds of your biggest supporters can feel daunting for any decision-maker. And if your organization tends not to update processes regularly, but rely on people who have been “doing it this way forever,” it will be important to build the will for automation before you start your free trials.
When have we successfully updated a process and what did we learn?
How can we start small and iterate on an automated process?
How does the potential rewards of the change line up with the risks - and how can you reduce the likelihood of risks?
Do you (or someone on the team) have the energy to champion this right now?
This is not an exhaustive list of questions to answer, but a starting place for collaborative and deliberative decision-making to invest in your long-term capacity for impact.
What questions are you asking when it comes to automating processes? And what answers are surprising you? Share your thinking and spark ideas for your peers just trying to shut their laptops at a reasonable hour!