Overcoming the challenge of real process execution

From our Friday noon memo #3:

Real operative process execution is miles away from its "conceptual" implementation. The difference is like you have a recipe for a cake vs. you've baked and served the cake. Our special article "Overcoming the Challenge of real process execution", published on the world's leading peer-reviewed BPM platform, BPTrends.com, features this topic.

In short, what's the challenge and how does it affect you?

1. Companies overwhelm their operational entities with policies, guidelines and new initiatives. (Example from our practice: a 50-people subsidiary received more than 30 change-causing inputs at the same time!)
2. Result? People in the local units have two options: either to lose the business focus by following all new inputs in parallel; or to ignore some of it. The first results in lower business performance; the latter in compliance risks.
3. The gap between assumption and reality develops over years. At the end of the day the headquarters manage and drive the whole organization based on a wrong perception: they initiate changes that are already in place, or skip really important ones. The subsidiaries feel detached and mismanaged.

In our next blog we'll discuss how to overcome the issue.

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Comments

[Mirko]

I absolutely agree with the comments made.

More often you can recognise that "companies" (in fact senior management) give detailed guidelines to their operational entities rather then setting goals and timeframes to achieve specific targets it.

It might be comparable with the man on the street who orders a taxi and asks the taxi driver to drive him to the airport within the next 30 minutes in order to catch his flight. Instead of relying now in the drivers ablity to do the job, the passenger is giving further advise like "you can drive faster here", "you might choose the left lane ahead" and "there is a short cut next corner". We all know that this might help the passenger in his feeling that the target will be reached in time but is overall very disruptive for the driver.

As long as you have the "right" staff with a suitable skill set you should leave them deciding on their own how to achieve the company targets - which doesn't mean in reverse not having a rigorous process management.

In most cases it will not only be more successful for the company but also rewarding for the individual who feels being an important driver within a process or change rather than a pure executor.