Sourcing Shangri-La

Future BPM - The Enterprise Platform

I’ve argued previously that sustainable success in complex global enterprises depends upon effective collaboration, and that process is the language that best enables it.  I’ve also argued that BPMN is out of the running as a universal business language, and proposed three questions we should ask in assessing alternatives.

The right language is vitally necessary but it’s not sufficient.  Traditionally, we say it needs to be supported by a tool.  I want to make the case here that the real value comes when it is supported a process management platform.

Tool, platform - what's the difference?

Here’s ten ways we can know an enterprise process management platform when we see one:

1. It is the single source of truth. It goes beyond defining what we do and how we do it. It defines as well roles, responsibilities and accountability.
2. It integrates processes with documents, systems, metrics and training to deliver content that is personalised, intuitive and valuable to every desktop and mobile device.
3. It makes it easy for users to feed back improvement ideas to process owners and stakeholders, to get engaged in continuous improvement.
4. It recognizes the need for variants and seamlessly manages them behind the scenes.  It allows global processes to be designed and managed in English (for instance) but displayed to the user in their chosen language.  It manages the ongoing optimization of the variants to a global process necessary to meet local requirements.
5. It is the framework for performance management. It integrates processes with metrics and analytics. It overlays processes with metadata, hidden to most users, with analytical features and reporting that allow process stakeholders and Op Ex and Lean Sigma teams to collaborate on change. It underpins every CxO dashboard.
6. It is the framework for change management. Recognizing that almost every proposed change has ripples, with implications for other groups across and outside of the enterprise, all business change is managed through it.
7. It bridges the IT:Business divide.  It engages business and IT in a rich ongoing dialogue. 
8. It is the enterprise QMS. It enables risks, controls and compliance to be embedded and managed within the end-to-end operational processes.
9. It provides all this within one unified governance framework that is robust enough to meet every compliance requirement yet also automated and intuitive enough to be easy to use. 
10. It is a chameleon. It can be stand-alone, or it can invisibly and intelligently integrate with other collaboration and social platforms, and any other systems, as required.

An enterprise BPM platform of this kind provides direct line of sight between strategy and reality. It links the operating model directly with the operational processes. It reduces the risk in every business transformation, from acquisition integration to major IT programmes. It embeds a culture of continuous innovation and sustainable improvement.  And the Chief Risk Officer sleeps easier at night.

The stakes are high. This is an enormously valuable prize.  There’s a race on to deliver it. Exciting times.

 

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11 Dec 2012    Process Management And Google Maps

© Text Michael Gammage 2013

 

 

Process Management and Google Maps

Would you rely on Google Maps if you knew it was incomplete, in different formats, languages and UIs - and that much of it was out-of-date? I don't think so.

But ask the same question in an enterprise context and the answer would oftentimes be 'Yes'.  An extraordinary number of businesses rely upon enterprise process maps that are incomplete, in different formats, languages and UIs - and seriously out-of-date.

Google of course saw the potential in location-based services in a mobile world and continues to invest heavily. But as Google's Mr Maps, Brian McClendon, noted in an interview at the weekend, everything depends upon having a solid map base:

"You need to have the basic structure of the world so you can place the relevant information on top of it. If you don't have an accurate map, everything else is inaccurate".  

So Google provides MapMaker and other tools so that its users can get engaged: in providing feedback, even in real-time editing and extension of its coverage. That user engagement helps to drive high levels of accuracy in Google maps.

Imagine an enterprise process map by Google Maps: a visualization of how the peaks of the operating model link to the valleys of everyday operational reality. With this basic structure of the business accurately mapped, it becomes possible to do much more: 

• to orchestrate business transformation
• to underpin Lean Sigma and continuous improvement
• to connect risk and compliance management with business reality
• to ensure IT alignment and enable business-led systems implementations
• to support front-line people doing real work.

But to do this, an enterprise process map too has to be accurate. It is the base map of the enterprise - the foundation upon which everything else is built. So it has to be properly developed and managed. It has to be comprehensive and integrated, and within a robust governance framework. Critically, it has to be in the language of the business because engagement is the key to its sustainability.

Adopt the language of IT - swimlanes, BPMN symbols - and it's a fatal obstacle to engagement with process stakeholders and users. Engagement requires the language of the business - which is why the adoption of Universal Process Notation (UPN) by virtually every Nimbus client may seem arcane but actually it's very significant.

There's another significant parallel here: the importance of personalization. Users don't want Google Maps as a replacement atlas to browse on their smartphones. They want Google Maps to present them with content that is about their preferences, their location and their time of day.  

It's exactly the same with enterprise process maps.  Users want to be presented with content that is about their role, their KPIs and in their language - that helps them to do their job.  But how many organizations simply create an enterprise atlas and file it on the corporate intranet?

Related Posts

10 Dec 2012    Sustainable Improvement

17 Dec 2010    The Tube Map: Process Made Easy 

Global Shared Services: Build It - But Make Sure That They Will Want To Come

It's interesting how rapidly the quality of the customer experience is racing up the strategic agenda for leaders of Shared Services Organizations (SSO) and Global Business Services (GBS) units.

Deloitte's Global Survey last year noted the need for any SSO to promote itself effectively - to overcome resistance, and to secure buy-in, by getting closer to its customers.

On the webinar with HfS yesterday, Ron Walker of KPMG went further, stressing brand development as one of the keys to GBS success:

"How you manage the GBS brand is critical. Any GBS has to sell itself, and to show quick wins." 

The perfect backdrop for my plug for an SSON-hosted webinar next month. Building on experience with a range of clients, I want to show how Nimbus Control provides a platform for SSO and GBS organizations to deliver continuous excellence - including an outstanding customer experience.

There's an interesting prelimary discussion, of course, about what we even mean by the 'customer experience' in this context. 

Deloitte has suggested a useful  distinction between the SSO's client - meaning the exec team buying the SSO's services - and the SSO's customer - meaning the day-to-day users of the SSO's services.  

Clearly 'an outstanding customer experience' has to deliver for both the SSO's clients and its service user customers...

[just fyi - in the typical shared services and outsourcing journey for most organizations, GBS units may be the final stage beyond an SSO, but for all practical purposes, I take SSO and GBS to be interchangeable terms in this context].

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21 Aug 2012    How To Simplify Global Shared Services

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Outsourcing: Death Throes and Birth Pangs

The existential crisis underway in the outsourcing industry makes for amusing reading. The industry has voted by a two-thirds majority to drop 'the O word', reports advisory group HfS, in an attempt to shed its apparently negative connotations. But there's no industry consensus on a new name - and 'outsourcing' features in many of the most popular suggested alternatives.

Phil Fersht, HfS founder and industry thought leader, doesn't mince his words:

"There is far too much “believe our own bullshit” going on and this industry needs to change how it is perceived before it can effectively “rebrand”." 

Phil maps out the four challenges he sees facing a stalled industry. But really they are all one - and summed up in his final challenge:

Challenge #4: How can buyers and providers really partner to foster innovations into business process outcomes?

I'm optimistic. Outsourcing service providers I know are investing heavily to up their game. They see the industry's current convulsions as death throes for a simpler world of labor arbitrage and automation.  And the birth pangs of a world where outsourcing will continue to prosper but in new ways.

If you ask me, two developments will define this new world:

All Work Is Process. The opening sentence to the first-ever APQC report on Business Process Management, published back when Adam was a lad - but it remains broadly true, and it is set to become much more widely accepted. So we'll drop, for example, the empty distinction between 'business process outsourcing' (which really means Finance and HR services) and the rest (such as IT, planning and analytics). All work will be seen as process. The process will always be owned by the enterprise but it may be delivered using in-house resources or be outsourced or, most often, through a hybrid of the two. 

Platforms for Process Excellence. If all work is process then every organization needs an enterprise process workbench. Outsourcing providers will adopt them to enable more collaborative engagements with their clients across the service delivery lifecycle.  Outsourcing buyers will adopt them to orchestrate the delivery of end-to-end processes, delivered through a constantly-adapting blend of in-house and bought-in resources - and to engage all the process stakeholders in continuous improvement.

Arguably, the most interesting challenges are now on the buy side: Developing Global Business Services organizations with the capability to continually re-optimize multiple, complex and dynamic sourcing equations [which include, crucially, keeping IT aligned] to deliver value and innovation for the enterprise. No surprise that GBS is the career choice for some of the brightest people I know.

Related Posts

21 Aug 2012    How To Simplify Global Shared Services

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Translating An Operating Model Into Real Work

Bringing in a Big 4 firm to create a new target operating model (TOM) has become de rigeur. But how many operating models are ever put to work? Not many. Some are just displayed reverentially on a pedestal in the C-Suite.  Most are 'executed' - by an expensive army of consultants - but with very mixed results.

It’s a big issue. Social, mobile and cloud technologies are driving ever more rapid business model innovation and associated process change. But many organizations are locked into 'a tragic pattern' (as Brad Power has discussed on his HBR Blog): The CEO launches a new change program with great fanfare, only to shelve it a few years later with little to show for great expenditures of time and consulting fees. 

The capability to execute well must be one of the keys to breaking out of this cycle.

Why are so few grand plans well executed?  The swirling fog between the TOM vision and the operational realities, for a start. There is no line of sight between the TOM as a ppt deck and the real business.

The primary mechanism for translating strategy into reality – integrated, holistic perspectives and end-to-end processes – doesn’t exist. Instead there are a myriad process fragments, in multiple tools and formats, ‘managed’ in functional silos within a feeble governance framework. 

So the exec team has a TOM roadmap, steering wheel and dashboard – but only tenuous linkages to the engine, transmission and brakes.

A process management platform provides the multi-dimensional matrix within which an operating model can be executed - reliably, efficiently and, in compliance terms, safely.

It’s the ability to execute that really matters. It's what underlies sustainable improvement. In a complex and fast-moving world, that just can’t be done efficiently any more with ppt and email...

Related Posts

20 Jun 2012    Process: The Emerging Global Business Language

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How To Simplify Global Shared Services

Most multinationals are almost ridiculously complex. It's a barrier to innovation, compliance and sustainable improvement - and increasingly a C-Level issue. Simplification has been one of three strategic priorities at GSK, for instance, since 2008. 

So Deloitte's report on reducing complexity in global shared services organizations is well-timed. Unfortunately though it misses the point. 

Deloitte sets out survey results which illustrate the prize.  Tackling complexity effectively, says Deloitte, can reduce the costs of delivering Finance, HR and IT by up to 20%, even in already 'rationalised' global shared services organizations.  And yet only 30% of CFOs believe that their efforts in tackling complexity are successful.

The low-hanging fruit of labour arbitrage and automation were harvested long ago. 'Getting a grip on complexity is', in Deloitte's words, 'the next frontier in reducing costs [of Finance, HR, IT and other non-core support activities]'.

Which is great. But, alas, Deloitte's report on how to get a grip on complexity is - frankly - very complicated. It could do with a complexity reduction program of the sort that it proposes. It presents interesting ideas but doesn't join the dots. Its definitions of an operating model and a business model don't quite work. Its attempt to define four different types of complexity - portfolio, organizational, process and information infrastructure - don't hang together well. It's light on governance and controls. It recognises the significance of master data management but doesn't link it with process management. To its credit, the report clearly advises a focus on end-to-end process. But it dismisses 'process flow diagrams' in favour of an exotic visual value stream approach, the benefits of which would be incidental at best.

More fundamentally, it overlooks what must be the 72pt headline to the complexity-slayer story: the power of process visualisation. 

End-to-end perspectives, expressed in the language of the business, with design principles that make it intuitive and easy on the eye. All managed within a methodology that blends compliance rigour with support for people doing real work, and ensures IT alignment.  This is what drives engagement in sustainable improvement and therefore, ultimately, in business simplification.

And it's not just effective in untangling process spaghetti, or bringing coherence to process fragments.  I've seen it to be equally effective in enabling organisations to escape the deadweight of enormous SOP document libraries and migrate to a far more agile world where end-to-end process provides the overarching narrative, supported where necessary by far fewer, and far slimmer, SOP documents. 

A picture being worth a thousand words etc, we shouldn't be surprised that once people can see what's going on, they are far better equipped to identify unnecessary complexity and collaborate to safely 'make things as simple as possible but not simpler' (to paraphrase Einstein, who never wrote on shared services, as far as I know, but knew a bit about complexity..). 

Related Posts

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26 Apr 2011    Process As Science And Art 

'Governance' Has So Many Meanings: Not Helpful

There's a swirling fog of confusion around what 'governance' means in the context of business transformation and process improvement - and imo it's hampering progress. 

Two examples:

Last week's PwC/HfS report highlighted governance as a critical issue in Global Business Services. It offers no definition of 'governance' but seems to mean something like 'a central organization or business unit'. 

In the Hammer and Company Process Enterprise Maturity Model (PEMM), the concept of 'governance' is both broad and specific, covering the extent of the enterprise process model, whether there is clear process ownership and accountability, and whether the 'Chief Process Officer' is coordinating all process improvement projects and driving integration with customers and suppliers.

Both of these may be plausible definitions of 'governance' - but they are also quite a long way from what many people mean. 'Governance' has become a very elastic term. These two definitions may be outliers but there's a formidable spectrum of meaning, from something as simple as version numbering to something as specific as segregation of duties.  

Arguably, 'governance' has becoming so elastic that it's no longer useful. Even its most obvious practitioners usually take it as understood. GRC vendors and consultants focus (for instance here) on risks and controls, with very little on governance (beyond Board issues).

'Governance', in short, is in danger of going the way of 'sustainability'. It's becoming motherhood and apple pie, a term to be liberally used (and abused) as required. 

Which is more than an etymological shame, because it matters. Governance is a critical enabler for sustainable performance improvement. Without it, any program will fail [and there's plenty of evidence how difficult it is to make cost cuts stick].

So what's a useful definition of this essential thing called governance?  Starting at the highest level, the simplicity of this definition is compelling:

Governance is.. how an organization controls its actions.

Deloitte spells out a helpful distinction between corporate governance and operational governance:

"Operational governance is very different from corporate governance, which focuses on oversight by a company’s board of directors and shareholders... In contrast, operational governance is a management activity that centers around key operating decisions by company managers and executives. Major elements include effective decision making through clear organizational roles, responsibilities and ownership... and continuous improvement through effective practices, policy setting, and knowledge sharing."

So what does 'operational governance' translate into, in the real-world context of a Finance transformation program, or a global business services initiative, or a sustainable performance improvement program?

See it through the lens of the principal actors and an operational governance framework comes to life:

For the COO, it's about visibility, accountability and ensuring the capability to design and execute performance improvement. Functions and end-to-end processes, the warp and weft of the operating model, are visible and integrated. Ownership and accountability are clear. Roles and responsibilities for the design of new target operating models, and their ongoing implementation, are explicit. And the whole organization has the means to get involved in continuous improvement.

For the CIO, it's about a collaborative framework that can nurture a rich dialog to ensure complete IT alignment with the business, and fully leverage IT's capabilities for the business.

For a Global Process Owner, it's about end-to-end visibility and ownership, with clear roles and responsibilities, with real-time KPI metrics and analytics, and the means to collaborate effectively with all the process stakeholders - including customers - on performance improvement.  

For a Process Stakeholder, it's about visibility and accountability across the enterprise, within their particular dimension. For the Chief Risk Officer, for instance, it's about understanding risks and controls, and ensuring compliance, within the context of 'live' end-to-end processes, not as something lodged in a document repository, divorced from operational realities.

For the Process User, it's about making it easy to understand what to do, how and when - and to have the means to provide feedback and process improvement ideas. 

So at the heart of good governance is structured and effective communication at all levels. HfS and the LSE presented survey evidence on a webinar last week High Performance BPO which illustrates just how much it matters.

Asked about the reasons for outsourcing failure in their organizations, the respondents were clear that it wasn't for lack of budget for change management. They highlighted instead 'communicating ineffectively with the business' as the #1 reason for failure. And in almost 40% of cases, 'not adequately planning for the full engagement of stakeholders' had a significant negative impact.

How to make it happen? How best to enable an operational governance framework that will drive successful business transformation and sustainable improvement? That's where the intelligent business process management platform comes in...

Related Posts

20 Jun 2012    Process - The Emerging Global Business Language

29 Feb 2012    Why Process Improvement Projects Fail

 

 

Why Governance Teams Are Not The Answer

It seems to me that there's a fundamental flaw in the conclusions that HfS and PwC draw from their survey The Future of Global Business Services published this week. And that their recommendations would lead organizations down the wrong path.

The report focusses again on governance (which featured heavily in their joint report last year).

This year's survey shows, they claim, that

"centralized governance organizations create the best outcomes...every organization should organize a governance team and, despite internal resistance from IT and business leaders who do not want to lose control, organizations should seriously consider centralized teams." 

All that I have seen in working with clients over the last ten years suggests that a centralized governance team is a dead end.  If by 'governance' we mean clear roles, responsibilities and accountability for driving every aspect of performance improvement, then governance has to be embedded in day-to-day operations. 

A small core group supervising governance policies and their overall implementation across the enterprise makes sense. But the meat and drink of governance is the relationships and behaviors of process stakeholders. It's about regulating actions in the real operational world of end-to-end processes. That's where it lives and breathes.

Quality management offers a parallel.  Most often it was seen as a silo, separate from operational realities.  It was a box-ticking activity, a cost of doing business. No-one went into Quality Management to further their career. Then organizations like Toyota demonstrated the value of a completely different approach. They embraced quality and tried to embed quality thinking into everything they did.  They realized that quality only comes alive when it connects with everyday operations and gets people doing real work involved. 

In Toyota's case, Quality begat TPS and Lean of course - but that's another story. The point is that nowadays a centralized Quality Management team is as rare as hen's teeth. Quality should be everyone's passion.

The HfS/PwC survey results themselves, and the HfS/PwC conclusions, illustrate that centralized governance teams can't deliver:

"Governance teams frequently accomplish their primary objectives, but struggle to create similar outcomes in areas outside of their key focus areas." 

In other words, a centralized governance team may be able to railroad through cost savings, but it can't also deliver innovation or agility or improved customer service. Centralized governance teams are naturally project-focussed and single issue. They can't deliver sustained operational excellence and continuous improvement because that comes from ongoing collaboration between all the process stakeholders and users.

What every GBS organization needs is a collaborative framework that enables 'Toyota thinking':

• a rich, ongoing and effective collaboration between all of the stakeholders of each end-to-end process (including of course its customers)
• an engagement with process executors and customer users that will ensure their continual feedback and so drive continuous improvement. 

Governance is the framework for this collaboration, the rules of the road that underpin rapid and sound decision-making. 

Governance is absolutely a critical success factor, and especially in GBS environments which are often complex and fast-moving, with many actors involved. But its value comes when governance is embedded into the everyday, not 'managed' from some corporate ivory tower.   

 

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Process - The Emerging Global Business Language

Anyone working on business transformation in a global organization will recognize McKinsey's assessment in research published this week:

"The structures, processes, and communications approaches of many far-flung businesses have been stretched to breaking point."

In Organizing for an emerging world, the McKinsey authors set out survey results - from 300 executives in 17 major global companies - together with their ideas for coping with 'the cumulative degrees of complexity' that globalization entails. 

Process, in one guise or another, is a recurrent theme. It's further evidence that a business process management platform is coming to be seen as the essential infrastructure to enable effective and enterprise-wide collaboration on innovation and continuous improvement.   

The McKinsey authors dismiss, quite rightly, the view that it's as simple as global standardization. Benchmarks, standards and industry models are invaluable guides but, at the end of the day, it's often a complex calculus. Every organization is on its own journey: "No company's restructuring should be viewed as a blueprint for that of another."

McKinsey's respondents themselves identified process as one of the 3 weakest aspects of their organization (from a list of 12, so it's serious). 

McKinsey's conclusions are sound, and, again, process is the leitmotif throughout:

- Don't standardise more than is necessary.  Which makes it vital to have a platform to manage effectively the ongoing tension between global processes and local variants.

- Fit technology to the process, not vice versa. Break out of thinking that automation and systems are, in themselves, the answer.  Which makes it vital to have a platform with an holistic and end-to-end perspective, capable of driving business-led global ERP implementations.

- Listen to all the voices involved. Worry about adoption and communication. Which makes it vital to adopt a process management platform that engages everyone - not just process owners and IT. It must connect with process stakeholders and, as well, support those who execute process and encourage their feedback. 

- Implement from the top. Make clear accountability and strategic direction, and don't be afraid eventually to mandate a new process.  Which makes it vital to adopt a process management platform with a top-down implementation methodology, and a robust governance framework, capable of blending top-down command-and-control methods with bottom-up continuous improvement.

So perhaps it's like this. Today, global businesses typically adopt a company-wide business language to ensure effective communication.

What we're moving towards is a future where global businesses typically adopt as well a more advanced language to ensure effective collaboration. And the language that enables collaborative innovation, within a governance framework that makes clear roles and accountability, is end-to-end business process.

Nowhere is this more true, of course, than in Global Business Services, where the capability to provide end-to-end process perspectives within a complete governance framework, integrated with documents, real-time KPIs, risks and controls, is rapidly emerging as a critical success factor.

Related Posts

29 Feb 2012    Why Process Improvement Projects Fail

17 Nov 2011    Future of BPM

7 Oct 2011      Accenture: What's Holding Back Shared Services

10 Jul 2011      Managing The Downside of Global Processes

Why Process Improvement Projects Fail

Interesting times. There’s an emerging consensus that Lean, Six Sigma and other process improvement programs are failing, and a myriad explanations why. And yet - I just saw a(nother) Nimbus client video on a remarkable success in sustainable process excellence.

There’s no shortage of doomsayers. In a PEX Network podcast just released, Nigel Clements, who will keynote at the Process Excellence conference in London in April, estimates that up to 70% of process improvement projects fail. In an article in the Wall Street Journal, Professor Sakya Chakravorty estimated that 60% of Six Sigma projects fail. And the PEX Network poll launched last week on ‘the biggest barriers to continuous improvement’ has already attracted 500 voters.

But why? That’s where the divergences start. There may be common agreement on the symptoms, but there are many different diagnoses of the underlying condition.

Nigel Clements, for instance, points to Deming’s 'five deadly diseases' as the root causes: lack of constancy of purpose; emphasis on the short term; compensation that distorts incentives; over-mobility of management; and only using visible figures.

Professor Chakravorty suggests the need for Six Sigma ‘experts’ to be retained on projects for longer; for smaller project teams; and for tying in performance appraisals to adoption of change.

Both though agree on what must be the single over-arching truth here: that success in continuous improvement (CI) is about creating an enterprise-wide culture of engagement and collaboration. And that it is impossible without leadership from the top.

Even Nimbus Control is not, dare I say it, an essential for success in sustainable process excellence. It hugely increases the chances of success in setting up and maintaining any CI program. But, ultimately, it is simply an enabler. Without executive vision and commitment, nothing sustainable can succeed.

The client case study I just saw is on the launch of a global CI program in a Fortune 100 organization. It brings new levels of creativity in how it leverages Nimbus Control. There’s huge attention to graphic design as one of the keys to users engagement. It has real-time metrics that look beyond process performance to cover as well process adherence and popularity. It also extends the standard RACI model in a way that brings a new clarity and productivity in compliance. And subtly, and throughout, it reinforces this organization’s values.

What made it possible? Executive energy plus the adoption of Nimbus Control as the process platform, and UPN as the process language. But it was also the Nimbus methodology: the creativity inherent in live workshops in the discovery phase, facilitated by an experienced Nimbus consultant, to map out new ways of working.

It’s confidential right now – for obvious competitive reasons – but hopefully might make it into the public domain in due course. It’s a sparkling glimpse of the future in a world of CI gloom and angst. And exactly the kind of story that can fire up C-Level imagination and commitment.

Hello Checklists, Goodbye Process?

My little world wobbled as I read Atul Gawande’s bestseller The Checklist Manifesto.

It seemed to challenge head-on my conviction that process matters most because it provides the language that enables effective collaboration amidst complexity.

It’s superbly well written (Dr Gawande is an eminent surgeon but he’s also a staff writer on the New Yorker). It was ravishingly reviewed in the FT, the NY Times and The Economist, whose reviewer described it as ‘a meditation on the growing complexity of the world, and how to cope with it’.

The book sets out the evidence on the value of the humble checklist in saving lives (and much else – injuries, time and costs) in even the most highly complex activities – in the operating theater, on skyscraper construction sites, and on the flight deck. It is utterly compelling.

Why do checklists work? Firstly, because ‘they get people talking’, suggests Dr Gawande. They break down hierarchical barriers and encourage the teamwork that can ensure the best possible outcomes – in surgical teams, among construction engineers, even in due diligence teams working for private equity investors.

Checklists also encourage discipline. They recognize that, in a fast-paced world, we can all too easily forget the obvious. Kitchens in top restaurants use them. Checklists can ‘force reflection’ says Dr Gawande, even in complex and dire situations like the loss of an aircraft engine.

As I read the book, I feared I was hearing the distant rumble of a paradigm shift. It seemed entirely plausible that my approach had been turned upside down, that process had been a wasteful diversion – and that checklists were the new process.

The truth though seems to be more subtle and interesting. Checklists and process may overlap but they are essential, and complementary, in enabling us to deal with our enormously complex world.

Both enable collaboration and ensure compliance. 'Checklists are not comprehensive how-to guides', says Dr Gawande, 'they are quick and simple tools to buttress the skills of expert professionals'. Sometimes a checklist could be easily substituted by an end-to-end process and a Storyboard. In other circumstances, only one of them will work. What’s appropriate will depend entirely upon the context.

Context is one of the exciting themes of the book. The best checklists work because their creators are painstaking in understanding the context in which they will be used. They care about the tiniest details because they know that it matters in effective communication. Those who have advocated ‘publishing’ business processes that are static, generic and described in technical gobbledeegook might want to read and ponder these sections.

It’s also, in an odd way, heartening to read of the widespread resistance to checklists, despite clear evidence of their value. Organizations and individuals, across all industries, often applaud the idea of checklists - but have some reason why they are ‘special’ and should be exempt. They have to be won over – even if they subsequently emerge as the strongest champions of the idea. Inviting us to re-think how we define heroism, Dr Gawande reflects on this inertia:

"…We don’t like checklists. They can be painstaking. They’re not much fun. But I don’t think the issue here is mere laziness. There’s something deeper, more visceral going on when people walk away not only from saving lives but from making money. It somehow feels beneath us to use a checklist, an embarrassment. It runs counter to deeply held beliefs about how the truly great among us – those we aspire to be – handle situations of high stakes and complexity. The truly great are daring. They improvise. They do not have protocol and checklists. Maybe our idea of heroism needs updating." [p.173]

Replace ‘checklist’ with ‘process’ and it’s the journey of most organizations towards process thinking, and towards a recognition of the process platform as an essential enabler for sustainable operational excellence.

Related Posts

10 Nov 2011 Value Chain or Process? The Costs of Confusion

20 Sep 2011 BPM: The Foundation For Operational Excellence

Future of BPM? We're In Mesopotamia 3000BC

Adam Deane has set off a discussion on his blog on BPM Visions Of The Future.

My own view is that we are witnessing a revolution in process thinking.  It's similar to the transformation that took place around 3000BC when humankind moved from hieroglyphs to phonetic writing.  It is that breakthrough which makes possible this blog - and poetry and tax returns.

That transformation - the adoption of phonetic writing - too was driven by business needs.  The emerging societies of that time needed governance. Writing was simply the most efficient way to record and report, to establish the bureaucracy upon which control depended.

It was also a global transformation.  Writing seems to have emerged independently in Egypt, China and Central America - but the best evidence we have today comes from Mesopotomia, simply because they used baked clay tablets, which have lasted far better than paper or bamboo. This tablet from Mesopotamia, from the British Museum collection, records the allocation of rations to workers (in the form of beer, an early local currency).

Process is undergoing a parallel transformation. Until recently, process has been about technical symbols, focussed on automation, and intended to be used only by a few.

In the future, process will surely be the universal business language. But it will be holistic, not just focussed on systems. It will be integrated, not just process fragments stored in a common repository. And it will be in the language of the business, so that everyone can understand it - and get involved in continuously improving it.

In short, process will become a polite term. Folks with MBAs won't feel embarrassed to use it. We'll no longer have two terms - process and value chain  -for the same thing.  And it will be inclusive, stimulating a richer and ongoing collaborative dialog: the CIO will sit down with the business user.

And the essential enterprise enabler for all this - the 21st century equivalent of the bureacracy perhaps - will be the process management platform:

... it will integrate process with documents, KPI metrics, risk and controls, quality and compliance,  training and task support.  

... it will provide the collaborative framework and governance that enables process stakeholders, and Lean and Six Sigma teams, to drive performance improvement.

... and it will deliver all this to the desktops and smartphones of people doing real work - in the form of Storyboards and a personalized intelligent operations manual. 

Which is why I count myself thankful to work in such an exciting area.  Phonetic writing gave rise to enormous creativity. You couldn't be reading that blockbuster on your Kindle without it.  As enterprises become more virtual, more outsourced, more socially responsible, more complex and with ever more global supply chains, we will need ever more creativity in the workplace.  And business process management will be a crucial enabler. 

This post inspired by A History Of The World In 100 Objects by Neil MacGregor. Highly recommended (an ideal Christmas present, if you can bear to let it go)

PS you don't have to wait! First editions of the process management platform of the future are available here ;-)

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Value Chain Or Process? The Costs Of Confusion

Here's a conundrum. Listening to Paul Harmon of BP Trends on Becoming A Process-Centric Organization yesterday, I fell to wondering...

How can it be that process maturity is good (which CEO wouldn't want flawless execution and a culture of continuous improvement?) - and yet, by whichever scale we choose, most organizations are pitifully low-scoring, and only a handful of the Fortune 2000 are at, say, CMMI Level 5?

One of the biggest barriers to higher levels of process literacy - and to wider C-Level engagement - must be confusion.  The false distinction between value chain and process perfectly illustrates this.

Let me make a claim which some will consider heretical.   Value chains (and value streams) are the same thing as end-to-end processes.  They have a different provenance, and vocabulary, but their purpose is identical: they provide a framework for collaboration on performance improvement.

I see nothing in Wikipedia's description of value chains that Nimbus clients are not already doing in their business process management programs.  Paul Harmon used the two terms interchangeably in his hour-long discussion - as indeed many others do.  

It's not just that we have two ways for describing the same thing.  If you call it eggplant and I call it aubergine, then it's confusing, and does nothing to help us collaborate in the kitchen, but as long as we are both aware that they are exactly the same thing, there's no harm done.

But we're well beyond simple confusion because all sorts of folks have created 'competing' methodologies and vocabularies. There are Value Chain and Value Stream frameworks and methodologies, with Lean and Six Sigma variants, that seem to be quite separate from everyday process improvement.  Whereas, to all intents and purposes, they are all doing the same thing.  

This confusion matters. It's a fruitless distinction in a world which is often already ridiculously complex. At the C-Level, it sounds like a cacophany of voices competing for mindshare.  Whereas the truth is that all of them are about building capability to manage the enterprise in a new dimension: end-to-end process, or value chain, or value stream - call it what you will.  

Tim Leach, Director of Competitive Excellence at Northrop Grumman, speaking at IP11, described the reality for many organizations when he said (of the situation at Northrop Grumman before adopting Nimbus Control) :

"How could it be that we have 7,000 people trained in Six Sigma and Lean yielding so little in terms of sustainable cost reductions and service improvement?"

If we want wider process literacy, and wider C-Level leadership in building process maturity, we have to fuse the existing disparate and apparently 'competing' approaches.  The start point must be to standardize our vocabulary.

I doubt that the UN or the US Supreme Court is going to take this up and make a definite pronouncement, so it's up to us.  Value chains have a proud heritage - but in reality they are about understanding and optimizing end-to-end processes.  Simplicity demands that we choose one or the other. 

No disrespect to Michael Porter, but I favor the wider adoption of process over value chain, and here's some reasons why.

End-to-end business process...

dovetails with compliance. Risks and controls, quality and compliance, can all be integrated within the business process management platform

can be integrated with real-time performance metrics, so process improvement opportunities can be more immediately identified

is the language of outsourcing and shared services, which are rapidly transforming the back-office of every organization

bridges the IT divide and enables business-led systems implementation

can be integrated with documents, systems and training - and delivered as a personalized intelligent operations manual to every desktop and mobile device.

Even better - there are already proven enterprise process management platforms, which provide a complete collaborative framework and governance to enable top-down process re-engineering as well as bottom-up continuous improvement - and they are becoming more widely adopted.

Process literacy is growing. The idea of process excellence is gaining currency.  Process maturity models such as CMMI are gaining ground, and even becoming mandatory in some public sector procurement. Let's go with process and get far wider engagement, at C-Level and across the enterprise, in performance improvement.  Let's embrace the Global Process Owner role now found in some visionary organizations - and expect that it will increasingly be recognized as a senior management leadership role. 

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The Process SOP Blues

It seems very odd at first. Why should Life Sciences organizations be so resistant to a change that is so self-evidently valuable? Why push back on something that makes things better, faster and cheaper? 

Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) are the basic building block of Life Sciences organizations. Almost always simply a library of lengthy documents, SOPs set out how the organization understands what it does; how it assures itself and its clients and its regulators that it is following Good Practice.

Even in the best managed Pharma organizations, the costs of compliance can be 16% of operating costs; more typically, they will be 20%+ and may even be towards 30% of operating costs.

So - if there was a better way of managing SOPs, how can there be such indifference? How could smart people be so unenthusiastic about a new way of working that would, say, make clinical trials safer while, at the same time, reducing their cost?

At the European SOP conference yesterday, the evidence from several speakers - none of them linked to Nimbus - was compelling: in many ways, some serious, SOPs don't work:

Susan Ollier from QED Clinical Services noted that SOPs may be missing, or contradictory, or out-of-date or uncontrolled. 

Steve Nicholas from PharmaAcademy presented supporting evidence from the UK's MHRA regulator. He went on to point out that the SOP document fails because is written to meet two mutually incompatible objectives. SOPs are supposed to be concise and easily understood (to support the process user), while at the same time being an exhaustive training document for a new starter with no experience. 

Gareth Turner from PAREXEL noted that 'a lot of what we do is actually quite simple. We've just created a way of making it extraordinarily complex. We need to get back to simplicity.' 

The answer, the future for SOPs that was served up in different ways by different speakers, is to adopt a process-based approach. 

Going beyond document-based SOPs to thinking in terms of end-to-end process can offer huge advantages. It's the kind that would grab any CEO's attention:  

Risk Management - it exposes the gaps and the overlaps that arise from silo-based SOPs. It also provides a comprehensive framework for managing outsourced activities. 

Productivity- it makes work easier. Storyboards deliver content, in an easily digestible format, through a personalized intelligent operations manual.  And it enables more extensive, and successful, automation.

Governance - it brings together Quality, the QMS and all compliance activities into an integrated management platform.  

Performance Improvement - it connects SOPs with KPI metrics.  It integrates Quality and compliance with Lean, Six Sigma and other performance improvement programs.

At the Nimbus Inspiring Performance 2011 conference, Novartis shared a brilliant example of an organization that is forging this future, leveraging Nimbus Control to create a smart, holistic perspective on its clinical trials programs.  

So WHY is the progress towards process-based SOPs so incredibly slow? It's a question I've never satisfactorily answered until yesterday when the penny dropped. I realised that people's resistance to a process perspective is not job-protection or an inability to think creatively.  It's because whenever they are shown process (and we saw many examples of this yesterday) it looks awful.

They know process as swimlanes, pools and numerous symbols (ie the language of BPMN). They see it as technical, in the IT domain, with no sense of design.  They see governance processes separate from operational processes. They see process as bottom-up fragments of understanding. So process for them is a loaded and negative term. Presented like this, who would want to use it? It's really no surprise that they push back and switch off.  

I wasn't the only one bored, I think. I found this rap on a scrap of paper as I left the conference:

 

 

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The Socially Optimized Business - And Process

I love the positive energy and openness of the Dachis Group and the Social Business Council - their one page graphic summarising Attributes of a Socially Optimized Business can be downloaded here - so I don't want to be picky.  But there's a flaw in their manifesto - at least, as I understand it - that may seem nerdy but is, I think, actually quite crucial.

I've huge sympathy for the call for a Renaissance in business:

"After decades of mechanistic, dehumanizing, process-oriented management dogma, progressive organizations are waking up to the disturbing truth that they’ve squeezed all the creativity out of their business. When companies embrace organic, passionate, socially-savvy initiatives, they blossom. Who benefits? Everyone."

What worries me is the way we seem to be trashing 'process-orientation'. 

Agreed, process has for too long been articulated in the form of technical gobbledegook. And it's rarely exciting. 

But - if we express process simply and holistically, so that people across the socially optimized enterprise can understand it, then we have a universal language that can get everyone talking. 

And if we support it with an enabling process management platform, then we have:

connected the creativity with how work gets done.  So we ensure that social business is not an ivory tower, it's about engaging with everyone's ideas

the ideal framework for Lean, Six Sigma and other process improvement programs - and for sustainable continuous improvement

the governance framework that ensures collaboration will be effective, across all the functional silos and the increasingly virtual extended enterprise  (it also allows the Chief Risk Officer to sleep at night). 

Great ideas -please sign me up for the Renaissance. But let's see process as part of the solution and so make it practical.

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