Whatever field you are absorbed in it’s useful from time to time to revisit the basic concepts and compelling reasons. We spend our lives in the ‘what’ and ‘how’ and they only have value if we have the correct ‘why’, and we can explain it clearly to ourselves and others.
What follows is based on the ‘why’ description from my recently published book, Elements. A free download of that book (all 218 pages) is available in my shop.
The Big Picture
Let’s start with the very big picture. The main game is about creating and sustaining effective and efficient management of our organizations. That means the effective and efficient delivery of the products, services, and experiences that we promise to provide to stakeholders as documented in our statements of strategic intent (vision, mission, values, strategy, mandates, objectives, etc.)
Producing the right products, services, or experiences, and doing so in a way that keeps everybody happy, is everyone’s overall objective. That’s an uncontentious starting point.
In every organization, we produce value (goods, services, experiences) through collaboration across the organization. Somebody determines there is a need, others do the design, someone builds it, someone else sells it, yet others install and maintain. Both the customer service and internal organizational benefits require all of that.
Cross-functional activity extends beyond the boundaries of our organizations since we are also customers, i.e., recipients of value, of our suppliers. Also, the recipients of our delivered value may use those products or services to add value.
Processes are how we get work done, how we execute strategy.
These are cross-functional business processes, and they are the only way products, services, or experiences are delivered (or received) — the only way strategy is executed – in any organization.
Any disagreement? I doubt it. Surely, this is a factual description of life’s supply chains.
So, if processes are how we get work done, how we execute strategy, surely it is obvious that we must therefore manage and improve those processes for optimum organizational performance.
“Manage” means discovering what they are, understanding how they work, knowing how they should perform and are performing, and making evidence-based decisions about problems that should be solved or avoided, and opportunities that should be realized.
“Improve” means then getting on and solving those problems and realizing those opportunities and being able to prove that the benefits were delivered (or not delivered).
And to do both of those things continuously.
From this high level, the idea that we must manage and improve business processes to improve organizational performance is surely uncontestable.
We look to the success of the organizational system. We focus on strategy execution.
An important general point to make is that process management and improvement does not equate to technology change — automation, integration, robotics, etc. As important as technology is in the management and execution of processes, if we start with technology, we don’t do process-based management; rather, we do technology-based management. Strategy execution through effective and efficient management is the objective; technology is one of the improvement methods.
Our focus must be on organizational outcomes, on the successful execution of organizational strategy. We must look to the success of the organizational system, not just success of the sub-strategies related to critical elements such as finance, people, facilities, or technology.
We need a comprehensive, holistic view of organizational performance, and the tools and techniques required to track and deliver that performance.
Process-based management gives us all of that that.
Focus on the process
Continuously improving process performance is meant to be part of business as usual. Everyone signs up for continuous improvement. What’s not to like – everything is getting better all the time.
A project is not part of business as usual. What happens after the project?
Many organizations have trouble sustaining process improvement activities over time. Sure, they fix problems when they occur, but that’s not the same as the consistent, systemic, and proactive search for improvement opportunities and current or nascent problems.
The best way to fix a problem is to not have it in the first place! The best way to realize an opportunity is to create it and make it happen.
A large part of the problem is the focus on the process improvement project, on what can be done to improve the project, on the need to embed change management in the project, and on leadership required to drive the project.
All these things are, of course, important, but if the focus is just on the project, what happens after the project? By definition, a project is not part of business as usual.
What happens after, and before, the improvement project makes the critical difference.
To properly focus on the process, we must know what the process is meant to achieve and the context in which it operates. The process architecture — the set of processes that defines process details and context — is therefore the engine that drives performance. It needs to be managed, not as a project or series of projects, but as a management philosophy and a system of perpetual improvement.
A packet of seeds and a shovel
We can describe a set of tools and techniques that enable the process performance management and improvement system. And it does need to be a system.
I have soil, seeds, water, and tools. Am I gardening? Of course not. A packet of seeds and a shovel is not gardening. Good gardening needs more than having the right components.
Those components must form a managed system that facilitates establishment of the garden, its ongoing health and development, and its ability to continuously deliver on stakeholder expectations, and all of that during times of expected and unexpected change.
A system of perpetual improvement
Organizations need both continuous process improvement and continuous process management. The components that make such a perpetual improvement engine are these:
- A continuous and conscious mechanism to track, analyze, and act on performance anomalies and opportunities, especially for the organization’s high-impact processes.
- Knowledge of the set of ‘critical few’ processes that are key to executing strategy and the interrelationships between them.
- Knowledge about the expected and real performance of those processes at all times, across the operational cycle of the organization.
- New roles for oversight of cross-functional performance, given that the traditional roles defined in organization charts are not about what happens across the chart.
- Action to deliver positive performance changes by removing causes of problems and constraints on realizing opportunities.
- Deliberate, active plans to build and maintain a process-aware culture.
- Development plans to ensure that the right tools and techniques can be used appropriately by all staff.
- Mechanisms to support the organization, its people, and their teams, through the change to, and ongoing use of, process-based management.
Management’s purpose is not to guard the status quot. It must be creating and sustaining a system that proactively searches for and delivers positive performance change.
This is the systemic approach that leads to better organizational performance through genuine continuous process improvement driven by evidence-based assessment of where the best return on process will be found.
A process life
A process-centric management philosophy is about understanding that we need a comprehensive, holistic view of all aspects of how our business processes work and the many ways in which they might be made visible and improved.
Management should not be about guarding the status quo interlaced with ad hoc activity to fix those problems that can’t be ignored. Management should be about creating a controlled system that continually searches for and delivers positive change.
What’s the process life all about? First and foremost, it is about the reality that the management and improvement of the important processes of organizational life is the primary mode of both strategy execution and performance improvement.
To be sustained and effective, the promise of process management must be delivered and be seen to be delivered. Sure, it works well in PowerPoint, but proven value must be delivered amidst the nitty, gritty realities and complex demands of organizational life.
There is a limit to what can be achieved through making process management compulsory. Forcing compliance will be an uninspiring, and perhaps sterile, chore. Attractive results will be far more effective. We need magnets, as well as mandates.
Why?
That’s my why. Does it work for you? Why? Why not?
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