Discover insights on establishing effective process hierarchies in business management, as discussed by an expert who navigated three client meetings this week, reinforcing the importance of functional and end-to-end structures.
A new blog post of LinkedIn newsletter was published on Feb 28, 2025 with the original title:
Process Hierarchy and Politics
Overview:
This episode discusses the concept of process hierarchy in business management, emphasizing the importance of maintaining both functional and end-to-end process hierarchies to effectively govern business operations. Challenges such as differing process executions across regions are also highlighted.
Core content:
- Three meetings with different clients revealed a common interest in the process hierarchy, showcasing the relevance of this topic across various business contexts.
- The functional hierarchy starts with broad functional domains like Purchasing, Finance, and HR, which are then broken down into individual processes.
- An end-to-end hierarchy is essential as it connects processes that cross functional borders, though assigning ownership can be politically sensitive.
- Dealing with variations in process execution across different regions or product lines requires careful consideration and adaptation of the process hierarchy.
Learnings:
- Understanding process hierarchies helps in managing and updating business processes more effectively, benefiting organizational performance.
- Employing both functional and end-to-end process structures allows for a comprehensive approach to process management.
- Ownership assignment for end-to-end processes should consider which function has the most significant influence on the overall process execution.
- The intricacies of process variations necessitate a flexible hierarchy that can accommodate different operational needs.
The original content was published in English.
