How upstream thinking can improve every process

The great thing about ‘upstream’ thinking is that you proactively apply it to almost any business scenario or function. Marketing? No problem. Sales? Fine. Customer communications? Absolutely.

With a little bit of forward thinking — looking upstream — you can start to identify and resolve potentially crippling problems before they float down to your day-to-day. But first, what is upstream thinking? And in what instances can you utilize it?

Glad you asked.

In this short article, leaning heavily on the insights and examples from Dan Heath’s Upstream, we’re going to look at how you can apply upstream thinking to solve problems before they happen.

What is upstream thinking?

Upstream, written by American bestselling author Dan Heath, explores how to prevent problems before they can happen. The book draws on insights from hundreds of interviews with unconventional problem solvers.

Upstream explores the psychological forces that push us downstream — including “problem blindness,” which can leave us oblivious to serious problems in our midst. Heath introduces us to the thinkers that have overcome these obstacles and scored massive victories by switching to an upstream mindset.

Ultimately, Upstream is about leveraging practical solutions to prevent problems, rather than simply reacting to them. Many of these problems — in both life and society — we tolerate because we’ve become accustomed to response, but Upstream invites us to think differently, to think upstream and solve problems before they happen.

So, how does this look in practice? Let’s look at a few examples.

An example of upstream thinking in HR

One area where upstream thinking can help is with improving the overall employee experience. Often, organizations use exit interviews as a way to measure workplace culture, processes, management and the experience — but we’d argue that this alone just isn’t enough.

The reason for this is if you’re only ever making changes after employees have highlighted problems and left, are you actually creating better experiences or just keeping your current ones afloat?

Sure, exit interviews provide vital information on why employees leave, but what we need to concern ourselves with is how we can get employees to stay. For example, what are the key drivers for retention and what are the challenges that our people face on a day-to-day basis that might contribute to them leaving?

From small issues such as inefficient onboarding to more organization-wide challenges such as the tech stack, listening to how employees feel about these problems and acting on them is essential to creating better experiences.

And it’s entirely possible to do so. Through real-time employee engagement surveys, quarterly pulses, satisfaction surveys and more, organizations can identify and start to close experience gaps. Moreover, they can use this information to work out the key drivers of retention and/or satisfaction.

Moving from reaction to prediction to prevention

So why is it that so many wait until the exit interview stage to acknowledge that something’s wrong with the process? Well, it’s because it’s easier to react than to predict, and because systematically, organizations are accustomed to working this way.

Instead, by looking earlier in the process to understand how employees feel about the workplace in general, the processes, management and so on, we can make progressive improvements to increase satisfaction and therefore retention. The earlier in the process we can make meaningful change, the better off we’ll be in the long run.

Suddenly, the exit interview is no longer just to determine where we've gone wrong, but also to see how well our new strategies are working. It then becomes a two-fold practice in that we use exit interviews to validate what we already know to be true, and constantly work proactively and reactively to make experiences better.

For example, if we know that the onboarding process isn’t comprehensive enough and employees feel that we need to make more resources available to them before, during and after, we can feed this information to the onboarding teams and HR teams who in turn can create more guides and useful documentation to support new hires.

As well as creating new documentation, they could set up one-to-one or group clinic sessions with employees to find out what they want to know or feel unsure about. This safe space then becomes an opportunity for employees to engage and more importantly, be heard.

In an ideal world, organizations should know what the problems are and how to remedy them. They shouldn’t have to wait for employees to highlight concerns in an exit interview, because the reality is that through routine employee feedback, these issues could become a thing of the past.

By listening to and understanding the needs and requirements of the workforce, we can start to create work environments that are truly transparent, inclusive and supportive of those who help the business to grow.

Now let’s shift to industry level — how can you apply upstream thinking in say, healthcare? Let’s take a look as Dan Heath provides one of the most profound and thought-provoking examples.

An example of upstream thinking in healthcare

“Nowhere is the need for this shift [upstream] more evident than in the $3.5 trillion health care industry, which constitutes almost a fifth of the American economy,” writes Heath.

The U.S. healthcare system, as Heath describes it, is like a giant Undo button, one designed specifically for reaction. As soon as a problem arises, it’s reversed.

However, while the system is so focused on making people better, it’s not designed to work out and eliminate the issue that made them sick in the first place.

But the U.S. healthcare system is highly complex, and to think upstream would require considerable changes in policy — not a short-term goal at all.

“Across the political spectrum,” writes Heath, “we’re all secretly in agreement about how our spending should be allocated. Across the political spectrum, we think the best way to ‘buy health’ is to invest two-thirds of our money into systems that make people healthy (food, housing, etc.) and one-third into systems that heal sick people. To say it a different way, for every $1 we spend on downstream healthcare, most of us think it would be wise to spend $2 upstream.”

That said, what was so interesting about Heath’s example is that when compared to other countries’ spending on downstream healthcare (responsive) and upstream healthcare (preventative), for every $1 spent downstream, other countries spend $2 or $3 upstream, while the U.S. spends $1 downstream and upstream.

So what does this mean in real terms? Well, while the U.S. is a leader in reactive healthcare and procedures, e.g. when a patient needs a specific treatment they receive the absolute best, it lags behind when it comes to upstream care.

Here’s an example to further illustrate the point. Compared the U.S. to Norway — Norway invests roughly $2.50 upstream healthcare, and it starts from the moment someone is born.

People receive free healthcare when they need it. Pregnant women have far more options. Education is free and people receive generous allowances to take time off work to raise their children. By shifting priorities upstream, Norway is able to take better care of people in the long term.

And statistically, it shows. Heath found that despite the U.S. having one of the best healthcare systems in the world, when it comes to infant mortality, Norway is 5th, while the U.S. is 34th. Life expectancy? The U.S. is 29th, while Norway is 5th. Happiness? Norway is 3rd, while the U.S. is 19th.

Now what’s crucial, Heath notes, is that both countries spend the same amount on healthcare as a percentage of GDP. Norway just chooses to spend it differently: upstream.

Heath’s example illustrates a different way of thinking. What we must acknowledge is that while the U.S. excels in immediate care, more could potentially be done upstream to improve lives for good.

How can you be more upstream?

Rather than being consumed by problems that keep you downstream, it’s time to tackle issues at their source.

This May and early June, we’re excited to announce that we’ll be joined by the author of Upstream, Dan Heath for our event: Moving your CX/EX program upstream. 

With insights gathered from more than 300 interviews, Dan will explain the upstream methodology and introduce us to some of the thinkers that have used it to solve problems and score massive victories.

You’ll also have the chance to hear from some of the world’s leading brands on how they’re proactively solving problems upstream using experience management.

The event comes in two parts — upstream for CX and EX. This gives you the opportunity to learn how you can improve both customer and employee experiences.