Mark McDonald

Process means different things to different people.  For some it is a four-letter word.  Something to be avoided.  Something that is bad.  Every organization is taking a fresh look at their processes as they look for new ways to raise performance.  This is transitioning views on process, its importance and its role in companies that have avoided the “P” word up until now.

Process is a four-letter word at companies that value independence, creativity, personal accountability and entrepreneurship.  These companies, often highly decentralized, view process as a means of control, a dampener on innovation and the reason why not to focus on customers and the market.

There is some merit in this view, particularly when we look the brief history of process from Frederick Taylor to today’s Lean Thinking and Six Sigma.  Go back to Taylor and you will find that process was seen as a means to prevent “ the ignorance of employers as to the proper time in which work of various kinds should be done.”

Go forward to today and examine Lean Thinking or Six Sigma and you will find similar focus on eliminating waste, reducing defects and eliminating variation in the outcome.  All of these things raise quality, improve customer service and are clearly needed in this environment

Companies allergic to processes point out the following:

Just because there is nothing wrong with a solution

Does not mean that there is anything right about the solution.

Process allergic companies, those that see process as a four-letter word, point out that:

• In the variance is innovation,
• In the individual the inspiration,
• In the waste that the accountant sees is the invention

No organization wants to loose its innovation, inspiration or invention.  That is not the reason to avoid process because process oriented companies are innovative (P&G), inspired (Southwest), and inventive (GE).  The challenge for managers is to resolve the convenient but unnecessary paradox that process and innovation are incompatible.

Returning “Process” to a seven letter word

It is important to recognize that even chaotic companies have processes, so a process allergy is a belief rather than a reality.  It is just that those processes are embodied in people, the culture and other social systems rather than being embedded in corporate policy and information systems.  Once you recognize that you do not routinely generate sales by doing a set of random things, you have crossed the first hurdle.

The challenge is in how to use process to generate innovation, inspiration and invention.  Those outcomes come not from imposing control but creating an environment for the aggregation of ideas, the accumulation of information and acting on insight.

To do this, processes need to concentrate on informing behavior and the company culture by creating greater transparency in how things get done – by people rather than by policy.  With that knowledge becomes a means to innovate at speed while operating at scale.

To do this, processes cannot be a mindless menu or activities and actions, a script that sucks the soul out of work.  Rather processes need to have enough structure to manage the outcome with enough slack to enable people to find better ways to do things.

To do this, processes need to be managed not in terms of compliance and conformity but as a way to identify demonstrated best practices that can be shared across the enterprise.  This form of ‘collaborative competition’ fuels the earnings of companies like P&G, CEMEX and GE who share what works and rapidly adopt it around the enterprise.

Process can be a four-letter word in the hands of weak managers.  However, in the hands of skilled managers it is the means for coordination, engagement and management.  In the hands of managers concerned with creating wealth rather than conforming to rules, process is not a four-letter word and certainly not the antithesis of innovation, customer service or new ideas.

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Category: Economy Leadership Lean Thinking Signs of weak management     Tags: Business Leadership, Business Management, Business Strategy, CFO, stupid management tricks

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