The word process is an abstract concept. As a result, its meaning is often dependent upon the context in which it is used, and the mental models of those who are using the term. The dangerous part of this is that people can carry on conversations about them, and believe that they are talking about the same situations, even though they are actually discussing several, fundamentally different things. As a result, they each can think that they are communicating about the same 'process', and can go away from that conversation with the mistaken impression that they all agree on something meaningful, or all have a shared vision of what it will take to transform something. What is really going on is that consensus is typically achieved by adding ambiguity, rather than removing it.

As an example of these different 'mindsets', consider the following: Read more »

Processes are as difficult to develop as products, and when considering cultural issues, can be even more difficult.  Unfortunately, developing or improving a process often isn't taken as seriously as a product development effort is... and as a result, the quality of the outputs from such process improvements can have very detrimental impacts on users, who have to try to muddle on, and may find themselves having to build products and fix proceses at the same time.

As an example, I've seen cases in which many different released processes prescribe what is supposed to happen for some activity at a macro level, without breaking down or allocating the steps into meaningful roles that individuals can actually perform. Expectations are set when a process is released that it will produce what it promises; when it doesn't, people are faced with two untennable options - fixing the process, or ignoring it, and they often choose the latter. Read more »

Strange as it may seem, there are still many pockets of resistance to the ever growing pressure for clean, crisply defined processes in your business.  Where there were once many different methods and approaches for doing a certain task, in many cases they've been process managed into one well packaged, slick operation complete with documentation, statistical process control and metrics.

But in some areas, there remains what I like to call the "ad hocracy".  That is, there is either a bias for doing things in an ad hoc way, or there are areas of your business where the daily demands for six sigma process perfection have not drifted down.  Of course there are clearly some business functions where it can be difficult to define a delineated process.  What is the ad hocracy and what does it mean for your business?

There are three reasons an "ad hocracy" exists: Read more »

We've been working with a few customers lately who need to improve existing processes or implement a new business process.  What's surprising to me is that few people seem to be able to deconstruct a workflow to define what work gets done, how it gets captured and who needs to do what next.  So, for what it's worth, here's the Thinking Faster lesson on deconstructing a process.

First,  understand the business rationale.  Why does the process exist?  What are the expected outcomes?  A purchasing process creates purchase orders that ultimately result in goods delivered or services rendered.   What is your process meant to do? Read more »