In spite of significant advances in both improvement methods and enabling technology, the success rate in implementing complex process redesign projects still hovers around 33% and has not changed that much over the past decade. When a good process design does not get implemented, it’s often due to insufficient focus and attention on accountability, governance, resources and momentum. Results can be compromised whenever there is insufficient attention to one of these factors.
Process excellence is becoming an umbrella phrase to describe the set of improvement methods such as Lean, Six Sigma, Lean Six Sigma, Business Process Reengineering, and technology driven BPM with the objective of improving operational performance. There has been a great deal of attention dedicated to the science of deploying each of these various improvement methods. Indeed, these methods of improvement have become increasingly codified and even commoditized. Much less attention has been focused on the art of succeeding with process excellence.
Many firms are actually quite good at improving performance on projects of small scope within traditional organizational boundaries and yet they struggle in achieving sustainable improvements to large business processes such as order fulfillment and new product introduction.
What’s the problem? Lack of committed leadership typically surfaces among the top few barriers in practically every survey on the obstacles in making major improvements to organizational performance. Why do leaders continue to struggle in this regard? There are at least three reasons.
Customers are increasingly demanding higher levels of speed and quality, yet leaders often focus mainly on reducing the costs of operations. Confronted by current and anticipated business challenges, incremental improvements to operations, while still important, will no longer be sufficient to gain advantage. This presentation outlines the needed evolution in leadership attitudes and behaviors in key operational areas. This presentation is based on Andrew Spanyi’s book – Operational Leadership – and it builds upon concepts introduced by Dr. John Kotter, Dr. G.
Let’s agree on a fundamental principle. Companies create value for customers and shareholders via the effectiveness and efficiency of activities or work which flows across traditional organization boundaries – often referred to as the firm’s cross-functional business processes. In order to optimize and sustain business process improvements it’s essential to overlay some form of governance that creates the right structures, metrics, roles and responsibilities to measure, improve and manage the performance of a firm’s end-to-end business processes.
If all you want to do is execute a one-time improvement to a small business process then governance issues may not be high on your agenda. But if you wish to fully leverage the power of BPM and apply the key principles and practices to your company’s large business processes, you will soon discover that governance is the cornerstone to sustainable BPM success.
Many firms are just doing isolated one-time process improvements with little consideration to deploying the sustainable improvement and management of their large, cross-functional business processes. They don’t realize that the fundamental concepts underlying BPM are all about customer focus and value creation and that requires a different leadership mindset.
Amateur golfers know how hard it is to get a consistent, repeatable, powerful golf swing. In golf, as in BPM, there’s no shortage of advice. Many experts agree that the essence of a consistent, repeatable, powerful golf swing has much to do with weight transfer, shoulder turn, swinging on plane, follow through, and balance. The same principles apply to BPM. So let’s explore why golfers should be adept at BPM.
This article originally appeared in the members-only quarterly BPM Strategies Magazine. Join today to receive your own copy.
To best take advantage of the power of BPM technology, enterprises first need to achieve a certain aptitude and the right attitude for understanding and improving the firm's large business processes. BPM is not a trendy technical fix for problems. It is a discipline...
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