Explore key insights on establishing an effective process hierarchy in business, covering functional and end-to-end approaches, from an expert who recently navigated multiple client discussions on this topic.
A new podcast episode of Caspar Jans was published on Feb 28, 2025 with the original title:
S04E02: Process Hierarchy and Politics
Overview:
In this episode, Caspar Jans discusses the significance of process hierarchies in business management, highlighting the dual approach of maintaining both a functional and an end-to-end hierarchy to manage processes effectively.
Core content:
- Three consecutive client meetings revealed a common focus on process hierarchy in business management, demonstrating the relevance of this topic across various organizations.
- A functional hierarchy starts with broad domains, like Purchasing and IT, and breaks down into individual business processes for clear organization and ownership.
- The end-to-end hierarchy connects processes that span across functional borders, such as procure-to-pay, challenging traditional functional structures.
- Assigning ownership to end-to-end processes often involves political considerations, aiming to optimize the effectiveness of the overall process execution.
- Variations in process execution across different contexts require careful differentiation within the hierarchy for effective management practices.
Learnings:
- Understand the importance of maintaining both functional and end-to-end process hierarchies for effective governance and management of business processes.
- Learn how to decompose broad functional domains into specific processes to clarify roles and responsibilities within an organization.
- Explore the challenges and political dynamics involved in assigning ownership to processes that cross functional boundaries.
- Recognize the need to adapt process management practices to accommodate variations across different regions and product lines.
- Gain insight into how repetitive discussions on the same topic can yield different conclusions based on specific client needs.
The original content was published in English.
