Input-Process-Output [Evaluate]. Repeat. Which one more important?

Hi everyone. welcome back to HDT blog. hope all is well to you all.

First of all, i would like to describe the classification of my blog. i will separate my blog into several channel. today blog will classified into "The Frameworks" channel. Why called The Frameworks? because this channel will talk about concept of sales and marketing strategy and how this concept should be. so, let's begin.

Today, i will talk about the very basic concept of strategic especially at sales and marketing area. At the beginning, in every activity we have to know the business model of each activity. One of the easier concept to know the business model or problem and challenge you have by understanding Input-Process-Output concept. Sounds easy eh? trust me, this parts looks easy but hardly to implement.

In every managerial aspect, we have to define first the flow of your business. You have to define the common thread of the existing business process. Know the general rules of your business process will easier for you to understand how the management or leader should be. Do not push yourself into the most difficult parts first when you face the new role or challenge of your duty. know the business process, understanding the common will help you a lot to win a war. even though it will takes a lot of time. Your patience and great analytical thinking needed here.

to make you easier to understand the business process you have to define the process based on Input-Process-Output. Common mistake made by people is jump to conclusion when the face the challenge or problem. Usually they will use their experience or others input to made a decision. People love the short and fast way, but trust me it is not wrong it is just imprecise and incomplete. Every problem in organisation or business is unique. So there are no one answer in every problem or challenge. maybe it could solve major problem, but not fix it yet one hundred percent. So, in term of determine the challenge or problem better for you to understand every variable of the business process. Here we go.

Input. The first question come up in my mind in term of the input is how we can get the right input for right decision or next process. 3 things that i've learned to make sure the right input are seek source, validate and test. you have to define the basic source of your challenge or problem. It could be a data, testimony, everything. once you got the data, never trust it directly. a good leader have to validate it and test the data to another source. maybe, there's some bugs on your data. Once your data corrupted, your process will be error and resulted a bad output of your result. maybe you are too lazy or do not have time to recheck your input, but but in terms of answering existing challenges and problems you have to do it.

Process. A lot of program you could use to process the input to produce the right output or at least as you expected. For instance POAC concept, TOWS scheme (not SWOT), etc. There are no right tools or wrong tools for your analysis, just appropriate or not. You could use any tools depend on your needs or problem you have. you could use multiple process, but as a hint don't make it too complicated. Right now we face a VUCA environment (interesting topics eh? i will discuss it later. I promise.), precision and fast response needed. Encourage your environment to critique every tools you have. sometimes, you could use historical data to sharpen your process.

Output. the most beautiful parts of the whole concept yet challenging. I said challenging because the main problem of this stage is not only get the answer of your problem but also find the most appropriate answer, maintain the momentum and evaluate that as become another input for your new problem. if you think you already passed 100% of your target/KPI by your output, challenge again yourself to make it better in the future. never live in a comfortable zone. you have to create your uncomfortable zone to challenge yourself better and better again. More detail of it, will explain in next paragraph.

[Evaluate] Yes, one thing that usually forgotten by manager or leader is evaluate your output. sometimes, when you have the answer you felt it as the maximum result you have. You could sharpen your evaluation by using a research / data test to see how well your input, process and output. is it worked or not? is it align and sync enough or not? i.e. if you set your target customer is male 40 years old, is it happen to your output? if no, what's wrong? your customer or your process? Otherwise, there are no right answer for every problem just appropriate. Also, there are no immortal answer, every answer have time limitation due to VUCA environment.

As a practitioners, a manager or a leader what we have to do is understanding that,

Good output could come from good/bad process ; good process could come from good/bad input. What we have to do is to make sure that good input produces good process, and good process produces good output.

That's what we should do. Cheers.