At the core of the process-based management value proposition is a simple yet powerful idea. It’s easy to understand, hard to disagree with, and not too hard to implement. So, why isn’t everyone doing it?
The Idea
In every organization we get work done, i.e., we deliver value to customers and other stakeholders, i.e., we execute strategy, through collaboration between the various functional entities (boxes on the organizational chart – divisions, departments, teams, roles etc.) This is not optional; it is always true in every organization.
Therefore, these cross-functional processes, especially the high-impact ones, need to be identified, documented, measured, managed, and optimized.
The theory is compelling, yet the fully committed practice of active process management is not ubiquitous. Why is it so?
The Obstacles
Six common obstacles are discussed in this paper, along with suggestions about how they might be overcome or avoided.
Compelling reason(s)
It’s going to get harder before it gets easier. Some of the excitement and enthusiasm present at the start is going to fade away once practical work and difficult decisions replace the conceptual presentations.
When key decision makers ask, “Why are we doing this?”, what is the touchstone that can reacquaint everyone with the reason for adopting process-based management.
It’s going to get harder before it gets easier … What is the compelling reason for continuing?
Plenty of reasons for delaying or stopping will be offered. What is the compelling reason for continuing?
One or more compelling reasons needs to be firmly established before commencement (or recommencement) of the process journey. This must be much more than some nice words crafted in a single workshop attended by enthusiasts. The compelling reasons must be compelling for all.
An effective reason may not be as grave as an existential threat (although that would be wonderfully compelling, we caution against creating one to gain the benefit!) but nevertheless a serious strategic driver is needed.
If every decision maker can clearly articulate the same answer to the “Why are we doing this?” question then this obstacle is greatly reduced, if not removed.
Mindset
Effective process-based management is 90% mindset and 10% toolset.
Too often, the focus is on the 10% at the expense of the 90%. Tools, including software, systems, methods, and techniques, are critically important — the full 100% is needed — but the tools are not the main game. Having the right tools is necessary but not sufficient. Tools and techniques are not enough; hearts and minds are also needed.
The likelihood that organizations, teams, or individuals will adopt process-centric management approaches depends on what they think will happen if they do.
Effective process-based management is 90% mindset, 10% toolset. … Tools aren’t enough; hearts & minds are also needed.
When everyone is conscious of their contribution to the cross-functional processes that are delivering value, the result is process management excellence.
The process mindset is not about attracting devotees to a theory but about creating and sustaining change in the way work is designed, undertaken, and managed.
The application of process-based management needs to take pragmatic form. It won’t be enough to declare a commitment to “operational excellence”, since that might just imply working harder to keep poorly designed processes operational.
Excellence needs to be found in a ubiquitous desire to continually find ways to improve performance — not just in a continuous, heroic struggle to correct for process flaws.
Ironically, at the highest levels of BPM maturity, the practices of process-based management are so embedded in the culture, and so ubiquitous in practice, that they are virtually unseen; they are out of mind. At the lowest levels of maturity, the idea of process does not even arise.
As maturity develops, individuals, and then teams become more mindful about cross-functional processes. Eventually those thoughts result in practical activities to nurture process thinking.
Over time, the application of process-based management becomes automatic and the classic definition of culture, “the way we do things around here”, once more proves accurate.
Conscious process awareness along the BPM maturity development pathway takes a bell curve shape transitioning from zero to zero, but crucially the foundations change from ignorance to mastery.
Timing is everything. An organization must be ready to start, and continue, a journey to process-based management, a change that is as much about organizational culture as it is about the logistics of process management and improvement.
Passively waiting for the happy day when everyone is ready is clearly not a winning strategy. Neither is the development of a process mindset a Jedi mind trick, something that just requires the exercise of a greater and more powerful will.
Create a deliberate, well-designed plan to develop an organization’s process mindset, that is, its cultural readiness for process-based management.
Philosophy, not project
Process-based management is not an initiative, it is not a project. Projects have end dates. Process management is an ongoing management philosophy. There is no end date.
Of course, there are lots of large and small projects associated with the establishment and ongoing execution of the process-based management philosophy but be careful that a project mindset doesn’t inadvertently create an ‘end date’.
Process-based management is not an initiative, nor is it a project. … (It) is an ongoing management philosophy.
Frame the initial establishment work as phase 1 of process-based management rather than ‘the BPM project’.
Make sure that one of the first processes to be actively managed is the process of process management and improvement – that’s called Improve Process Performance in my reference architecture. This process must be documented, measured, managed, and improved just like any other high-impact process. Perhaps it should be the gold standard for effective process management.
Deliver benefits
An important challenge question that we should ask regularly is this: “What has been achieved through our business process work so far?”. The only valid response must identify the delivery of proven, valued, business benefits. For a process improvement to be real and worthwhile it must be a benefit to the business, it must be about the business, and be valued by the business, not through an act of faith but because of proven process performance data.
The proven, valued, business benefits (PVBB) standard sets a high bar for proving the validity of process management – and we are not in the business of setting low bars.
PROVEN. Show me the data. If there is no evidence, the improvement didn’t happen. Don’t ask for an act of faith. Show me the hard, objective, quantitative evidence of process performance improvement.
VALUED. Delivered benefits must be genuinely valued by the business, not just the process practitioners. If someone outside the BPM team didn’t get excited about the delivered benefit, then it’s not much of a benefit.
BUSINESS. Valued process performance improvements will relate to some important aspect of organizational performance. The change should relate unambiguously to the enhanced achievement of an important strategic or operational objective.
BENEFIT. Keep it real. Decision makers in our organizations are not sitting around waiting for the process folks to turn up with a new idea. They are dealing with the complicated, messy business of planning and management. They’ll be keen to hear about improvement ideas but will likely have little capacity for speculative experimentation.
The proven, valued, business benefits (PVBB) standard sets a high bar for proving the validity of process-based management.
To be real and sustained, an improved process must be a solution to a current business problem, an avoidance of an emerging problem, or the fulfilment of a real opportunity.
PVBB defines not just target outcomes but the mindset and approach that will enable such outcomes. Make a sign, literal or figurative, and keep the idea front of mind.
Spread capability
It seems unlikely that a team tasked with improving process performance would design, implement, and operate a scheme that would slow the flow of improvement work, i.e. a bottleneck. And yet that is what happens far too often.
A central process support team that is mandated, or comes to be relied on, to initiate, and be involved in, all process management and development work will become a significant handicap to process-based management.
The main purpose of a central process support team must be to raise capability across the whole organization.
The people in such teams may be very accomplished, but even they have a limit as to how many places they can be at the same time. In any other context, a mechanism like that would be called a bottleneck, something a process team would be tasked to eliminate. Oops!
The main purpose of a central process support team must be to raise capability across the whole organization. A measure of their success is not how many process improvement projects have been successfully completed, but how often that has happened without their direct involvement.
Focus, focus, focus
Improving organizational performance is our goal. We can’t optimize organizational performance by improving the wrong processes. There are way too many processes for us to actively manage them all. We need to focus.
We are already making choices. Best if that is done through thoughtful, conscious analysis and decision making.
The process management and improvement space is, for all practical purposes, infinite. The resources we can apply to process management and improvement are finite, and likely a lot less than we would like. Wise decisions are needed in allocating resources to get the best return. We need to focus.
Your organization does not have a business problem called “we don’t have enough process documentation”; nobody does.
Process documentation is a tool, not an outcome.
At the start of any such exercise its value should be challenged. Why? Why now? Document processes just in time, not just in case. We need to focus.
It is not possible to manage all our processes, so we are already making choices. Best if that is done through thoughtful, conscious analysis and decision making.
Breakthrough?
We’ve discussed six common obstacles to commencing and continuing the process-based management journey. Perhaps you have encountered, and I hope overcome, others?
If we are to breakthrough to serious process management, we need to clearly identify the particular obstacles that we face and devise ways to overcome or avoid them.
Roger Tregear
Bungendore
April 2025
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