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“People and their managers are working so hard to be sure things are done right, that they hardly have time to decide if they are doing the right things.” – Stephen Covey

If you’ve ever tried to keep scorecards for a high school baseball team, which I did for a couple of years a long time ago, you learn after a while to keep track of what’s really important, ignoring the occasional slip while making sure the captured data points can be used to improve the team’s overall performance. Since then, I’ve learned that well-managed enterprises, including some in government, use a similar approach.

Farah looked over a new operations process. At first glance it seemed to address some long-standing concerns she and other colleagues had. Farah ensured that she had entered into a meaningful dialogue with all of the departments to ensure that everyone had their say and agreed with the changes. Perhaps more importantly, Farah made sure that the changes in the process respected product requirements, safety regulations and her company’s quality standards.

For the first week the process seemed to work very well. Farah was very pleased to see quality improvements. Then after about three weeks of implementing the new process, Farah started noticing some hitches and hiccups. Every now and then she gently prodded an employee to more closely adhere to the new process and for a short time the employee would do so. But it seemed to Farah that within a day or so many of the employees would mix the new and old processes and the results of this were less than ideal.

Process mapping is often the first step in business process improvement.  It is a necessary activity that provides a baseline from which improvements can be measured and is the key to identifying and localizing opportunities for improvement.   Therefore it is important that facilitators capture the right information to help steer process improvement initiatives in the right direction. 

Facilitators must possess the ability to lead (steer the direction of meetings), manage people (deal with conflicts and diversions), and persuade participants to open up and share the knowledge they possess to have successful mapping sessions.  This can be challenging when dealing with large groups and complicated processes.  Following the guidelines outlined in this article can help to ensure that you have a successful process mapping session.    

Do you wonder why some BPM efforts seem to proceed more smoothly? Stakeholders have provided clear directions regarding improvements. The project manager has the pulse of all the activities happening on the project. The process owners and technical experts are collaborating and making changes to processes that will enable the organization to improve its operations substantially.

No this isn’t someone’s dream, and it does happen, albeit rarely!

Project members’ poor communication is one of the reasons business process efforts aren’t more successful. In fact, failure is virtually ensured if just one of these groups doesn’t communicate clearly. 

Good communicators know before they open their mouths what they want to convey. They are clear about the message they want to communicate. Accomplished communicators are specific and use words and language that resonates with their listeners.

“I think many [agencies] would greatly benefit from a top-to-bottom efficiency analysis . . . done by people who understand government. The results of such an analysis . . . can provide a menu of choices for . . . officials as they work through the real nitty-gritty issues of efficiency in government.” – John R. Bartle, dean of the College of Public Affairs & Community Service at the University of Nebraska at Omaha