Elise Olding
Research Director 3 years at Gartner 26 years IT industry
Elise Olding is a research director in Gartner's Business Process Management (BPM) group. Ms. Olding provides research on a worldwide basis, advising clients on BPM implementation practices. Read Full Bio
I was part of the Gartner EA summit in London last week. There were 400 attendees from more than 30 countries. Betsy Burton, VP and distinguished analyst gave a compelling kick off presentation “Getting a Seat at the Strategy Table.” Burton challenged the audience to create a “clear line of sight between EA and key business outcomes.” I heard many mumbling “yes!”
This was followed by an entertaining and mind-expanding external keynote by Gabe Zichermann on gamification. He presented some interesting case study examples. Zichermann states that “engagement is core metric of next decade” and includes: recency, frequency, duration, virality and ratings. The most “fun” quote from Gabe was “gamification is the new black.” (Personally I would have been more excited about pink…)
A case study presented by David Cotterill, Head of Innovation at the UK Department for Work and Pensions, detailed how they used gamification techniques in an idea generation application. Cotterill asked the audience how many would introduce gamification into future applications and 25% to 30% of the audience said they would. Cotterill sees gamification as a method to drive social and collaborative behaviors. He stated that those who are influencers in the organization can now tap into and engage the larger group to promote organizational change. Cotterill advises “build the culture first, worry about the process later.” This means that you need to focus on developing collaborative and team behaviors which are often not a part of the cultural norms. (Back to the chicken and the egg – see my prior blog post here.)
I presented a session on how EA and BPM can work together. Approximately 50% of the session attendees were responsible for leading BPM programs. I found this a surprising but welcome trend. BPM is the way for EA to tap into delivering value and the critical enabler to Burton’s challenge above. By connecting EA strategy to BPM implementation a clear connection can be made to the measurable value delivered by the BPM project. The key is to connect the EA enterprise context (EC) which defines the anchor model or value chain to the process hierarchy used by BPM. This provides the traceability for BPM project results back to the EA strategies.
It was a great two days and the attendees left with a lot of valuable ideas to take back with them.
Having returned last week from the Gartner BPM Summit in Baltimore, I have been mashing together the ideas that came out of the many discussions. One that has surfaced is the concept of inflexible or “brittle” processes and the correlation with organizational rigidity.
As we shared at the conference “by 2015, the ability to embrace and master continuous change will define competitive advantage.” I believe that there is a strong connection between how brittle processes are and how inflexible (or change-averse) the culture is. Focusing process efforts on goals such as efficiency and standardization tend to reinforce more rigidity in the organization’s culture. There is little room for improvisation and no tolerance for failure. Focusing on visibility, accountability and adaptability (our tenets of BPM), enable organizational learning and can move the dial towards a more adaptable, resilient culture – what we call “organizational liquidity.”
Some of the ways ways of making processes less brittle include:
Think outside-in rather than the tradition inside out view of our processes. Our organizations have been designed to maximize efficiency from an internal view. The whole process reference model needs to get turned on its head to represent an outside in view. This model embraces responsiveness and drives accountabilty into the organization. I believe that we will see that evolving over the next five years.
Think about the outcome of the work and not so much about how it gets done. A baseball pitcher doesn’t throw one type of ball. He/she assesses the game situation, who is up to bat and what their capabilities are. The throw is an outcome. Sure all the mechanics and talent are there, but each throw is made up of repackaging individual steps to reach that outcome. We will need to manage process risks and costs, but must also look to engage the knowledge, expertise and passion that can be locked up in process participants heads. Variability is not the enemy if you are trying to achieve process effectiveness.
Think about how to embed collaboration and social interaction into the work that happens inside your enterprise. Social BPM techniques enable work to happen more naturally and lets processes to mirror the way people work. When people work together they create and creativity is fluid. We are social animals and the sum of the parts add up to more than the whole.
It’s always back to the chicken and the egg. Does a great culture drive better processes or do good processes enable a great culture? I’m going to put a stake in the ground that it starts with process and as BPM practitioners we can make a difference.
The Gartner BPM Summit in Baltimore wrapped up last Friday at noon but the tweet stream lives on. The event was well attended with 863 people registered. On Wednesday, April 27th, I challenged the audience to become the most twitterfluential attendees across the various Gartner conferences. We did well, but didn’t take the top spot. (The Gartner CRM event outdid us.)
April 27th stats:
# tweets for the day – 637 # unique tweeters – 91
April 28th stats:
# tweets for the day – 789 # unique tweeters – 114
In the course of my organizational change research, I’m increasingly convinced that having a “change-able” culture will differentiate organizations in the future. This differentiation can positively impact the bottom line. Research abounds on the topics of well-being, motivation and more holistic views on change that embrace the emotional as well as logical components. I will share a few books I’ve read covering these topics. These are all worthwhile reads for BPM practitioners and will increase your ability to articulate the need to address the thorny organizational challenges to really drive improvement.
Well being, furthers the work of employee engagement, taking a more holistic view of individuals that make up an enterprise’s employee base. In Wellbeing: The Five Essential Elements (Rath/Harter, 2010), the authors provide the research and insights from a comprehensive study on wellbeing. Their research supports the premise that organizations who focus on employee wellbeing can show a positive impact to the bottom line.
Influencer (Patterson, Grenny, Switzler, McMillan, Maxfield, 2010) is an amazing book that is packed with insights, practical advice and examples. (It’s so good I almost don’t want to share it!) There are a plethora of useful techniques that can be directly designed into BPM projects to successfully influence change. From the website:
The key to successful influence lies in three powerful principles:
Identify a handful of high-leverage behaviors that lead to rapid and profound change.
Use personal and vicarious experience to change thoughts and actions.
Marshall multiple sources of influence to make change inevitable.
In Switch (2010), the Heath brothers do an amazing job of explaining the emotional and logical components of change. They clearly lay out how these two elements play with and against each other. The insights can equip BPM practitioners with the ability to better design organizational change actions as part of their BPM project and program work. This is particularly helpful when applied to addressing the emotional fallout from political issues that can be triggered by BPM work. Great summary here.
Dealing with the “people” aspects of change is always challenge. Developing a cadre of these skills can be an asset to any BPM practitioner who wants to increase BPM project success and positively impact bottom line results.
The US BPM Summit is a few weeks away! We have 715 attendees as of this morning.
Last month we held the European BPM Summit in London. It was attended by approximately 300. Looking back, the buzz there was amazing. There was so much energy and interaction. I left feeling truly excited about what we as BPM practitioners can do and am looking forward to more interactions – and another dose of energy from the summit in Baltimore!
One of the sessions I conducted – “The First 100 Days of the BP Director,” was well attended and received excellent reviews. This session will be included in the US conference. Building from published research, this updated presentation engages the attendees by having them fill out two templates during the discussion.This becomes the basis for an action plan. It’s always important to leave a conference with some action steps that can be applied when you get back to work. You can expect a lot of that from our US conference.
Carol Rozwell and I co-presented a new presentation based on extensive research – “The Nexus of Opportunity.” It highlights three interrelated themes that are converging on your organization – Social BPM, Organizational Liquidity and Operational Resilience. This advanced session challenges traditional BPM thinking. It outlines some shifts that will need to be considered when pondering the future of how processes will be designed and executed. I will be presenting this session solo in Baltimore.
Here are the event details:
The conference theme is “The Formula for Sustainable Business Value.” The comprehensive tracks are targeted to your BPM experience level — whether you are beginning, intermediate or advanced. Workshop sessions offer an in-depth opportunity to explore a specific topic and work with peers.
BPM Summit is April 27-29 in Baltimore, MD at the Baltimore Marriott Waterfront hotel. See full event details and agendas here.
The winners of the Gartner BPM Excellence awards will be attending. To read more about the winners click here. We look forward to seeing you in April, in the mean time follow #BPM11 on Twitter to stay up to date on the event and connect on site.
Update: The BPM Summit continues to attract attendees, with attendee registrations at 642 as of April 6, 2011. The conference theme is “The Formula for Sustainable Business Value.” The comprehensive tracks are targeted to your BPM experience level — whether you are beginning, intermediate or advanced. Workshop sessions offer an in-depth opportunity to explore a specific topic and work with peers.
Not to be missed are the external keynote speakers - Don Tapscott who will be presenting “Rethinking Business Processes for an Age of Networked Intelligence and Phil Eastman III covering the important topic of organization change with “Change Management: A Process for Realizing Business Results.”
SECTOR
Total
Government PS & E
21%
Financial Services
18%
Manufacturing
14%
Services
13%
Tech
11%
Heathcare
10%
Energy
5%
Retail
5%
Transportation
1%
Education
1%
Media
1%
There is also a good mix of attendees at different job levels:
JOB LEVEL
Total
Management
39%
Executive
33%
Associate
16%
Unknown
10%
C-Level Management
2%
Find out more about the summit here. Track the conference tweets using #BPM11.
The message read “You’ve Been Ousted as mayor of XXXPetStore.” My reaction? Big deal! I had no desire to race to the store to recapture my status or find numerous excuses to purchase toys for my two adorable tonkinese cats.
Gamification is an engagement technique that borrows video game mechanics (game features such as points, leaderboards, challenges, etc), and uses them to change behaviors in non-entertainment activities. For the most part gamification relies on these external motivators, and it really could have limitations on its ultimate effectiveness, as described in Motivation 2.0.
Why? Because it seems many gamification techniques are Motivation 2.0 – or at least being applied in that way. According to Daniel Pink the author of “Drive” there are two kinds of motivators – extrinsic and intrinsic. Pink’s main point tears down the notion that you are likely to behave a certain way because you are motivated by an external goal or reward. These sort of motivators are only as good as the next “if -then” rewards. So “if” I went to buy some cat toys and I checked in, I could “then” become mayor, which did little to get me to stop what I was doing, head to the store and purchase yet more toys for my adoring felines. At least for me, Motivation 2.0 does not create sustainable behavior change, even though it seemed fun in the beginning. Once the mayor novelty wore off so did the desire to pull out my smart phone and check in every time I visited the location.
Contrast that with Motivation 3.0 which Pink defines as finding joy and motivation in simply “doing the activity.” That’s intrinsic motivation. Not to say that all gamification is meowing up the Motivation 2.0 tree as some game dynamics, such as altruism or self-expression, really are driven from within – but it should be thought through about what behavior changes are desired and how best to engage someone on the more intrinsic level. Product planning and business process design or BPM, both excellent candidates for using gamification, can only benefit if their intrinsic and extrinsic motivators are carefully designed, implemented …. and modified all the way so they will continue to deliver value (and fun) to their users.
For some additional information and alternative opinions, check out Brian Burke’s blog, Mike Rolling’s blog and a Gartner research note by Brian Blau (for Gartner clients).
What are your thoughts?
Lula and Sailor Anxiously Awaiting the Arrival of New Cat Toys
Are you coming to the Gartner BPM Summit in Baltimore? It’s shaping up to be a great event. We already have 394 paid registrations, with just a little more than 4 weeks to the conference.
The content is relevant to all levels of BPM – whether you are just starting out or a seasoned practitioner. Our external BPM Advisory Board will be highlighted – a group of leaders representing a spectrum of industries ranging from government to high tech – EnMax, Chevron, Iron Mountain, Arrow Electronics and Altera. Don’t miss this opportunity to learn from and network with industry leaders, Gartner analysts and peer attendees.
Here’s the current attendee demographics…
SECTOR
Total
Govt PS & E
27%
Fin
17%
Manf
15%
Svcs
15%
Tech
10%
HC
8%
Retail
3%
Energy
2%
Trans
2%
Media
1%
Misc
1%
.
We will be promoting the use of Twitter and challenge the attendees to break the Gartner record for highest percentage of attendees tweeting! Up for a little competition? Exploit Twitter to fully engage with your peers during and after the conference. Use #BPM11 to join the pre-conference conversation. Additionally we have a LinkedIn group with over 4500 members – join at Gartner Business Process Management (Xchange)
I look forward to seeing you there! Follow me on Twitter @eliseolding
The winners of the 2011 BPM Excellence Awards have been announced! We had a great response to our call for submissions – 24 in all. A rigorous selection process was applied with participation from the entire Gartner BPM team, as well as analysts from our business applications and vertical industry groups. A huge “THANKS” to everyone who contributed. The winners will present at the Gartner BPM Summit in Baltimore, April 27-29. This will be a great opportunity to interact and learn from the leaders.
Our own Michele Cantara says: “Business process management continues to grow in popularity because it offers major business performance improvement advantages. Success in the adoption of BPM is heavily dependent on the ability to tackle people, process, and technology issues at the same time. These organizations are excellent examples of knowing how to apply organization and change management disciplines and appropriate BPM technologies at different levels of BPM maturity. Each of these companies saw significant contributions to business outcomes, based on their use of BPM.”
These companies will be presented with their awards in the following five categories:
Lincoln Trust Company: Advancing BPM Competency— Sustaining BPM in an organization requires building the competency and having a vision about how BPM will function within the enterprise. Lincoln Trust Company was able to deliver 120 percent return on investment (ROI) in the first year of its BPM program. As a result, BPM is now the way the organization works. Attend this session to hear Lincoln Trust Company discuss how BPM competencies have been incorporated into the decision-making and collaboration activities of executives, managers and workers.
A U.S.-based State Department of Finance and Taxation: Attaining BPM Metrics and Performance — The bottom line for process improvement is surrounded by solid goals and metrics to measure end-to-end process improvement, as well as functional excellence. This State Department tax agency needed to resolve more than 400,000 exception filings in a timely fashion without adding head count. The department was able to reduce exception cycle time by 60 percent and save over $1 billion with BPM.
MAXIMUS: Delivering Innovative BPM Solutions— Many organizations leverage process improvement for cost cutting and this is a staple for continued existence; however, the best processes exhibit innovation for organizations and constituents. Maximus, an $831 million provider of business process outsourcing services to government health and human services agencies, will explain its innovative use of process intelligence and process simulation, as well as its approach to fostering BPM adoption in its own and its clients’ workforces. In addition to winning the award for “Most Innovative Use” of BPM, Maximus also was the overall BPM Excellence Awards winner.
UPS IT Shared Services Group: Furthering BPM Disciplines— Spreading the benefits of BPM on a large scale requires demonstrating success and reinvesting returns in deepening the level of process improvement habits and skills. The UPS IT Shared Services Group identified that a formal BPM platform was needed to aid in addressing a number of process and service challenges while driving change for enhanced business value and alignment. The company achieved the needed results utilizing only internal resources without the aid of outside vendor professional services consultants.
The Carphone Warehouse: Leveraging BPM Technology — While process improvement is not solely dependent on BPM technology, many implementations utilize BPM technologies. The Carphone Warehouse Group is Europe’s leading independent retailer of mobile phones and services with over 2,400 stores in nine countries. It also includes Best Buy Europe. Carphone Warehouse used a cloud-based BPM platform to deploy 1,800 processes in eight months to 7,000 colleagues. As a result, it was able to increase customer satisfaction by up to 25 percent in 90 days.
And There’s More…
Runners up were also selected in each award category:
Best Practices in Advancing BPM Competencies – Nokia Siemens Networks
Best Practices for Attaining BPM Metrics – Farmers Insurance Group
Delivering Innovative Solutions – Nokia Siemens Networks
Furthering BPM as a Discipline – Catalina Marketing
More information on the Gartner BPM Excellence Awards here or on the Gartner BPM Summit website. I look forward to seeing everyone at the US BPM Summit.
Start the pre-conference buzz on Twitter using #BPM11. What’s your most pressing BPM question?
Elise Olding
California shortly to enjoy some sun 
in Baltimore. See you soon.
