The plumbing of all organizations are the business processes by which they are driven by. I view business processes as the means by which an entity within an organization can quickly turn around an artifact or information need to another entity within the same organization or outside to deliver an immediate result.
It’s astonishing to me to see how many processes in business are broken. What’s ridiculous are three major facts based on my experience:
- How oblivious some managers are to realize how broken their processes really are
- How aware management is that their processes are broken, and their inability to make any change whatsoever to fix it
- How current-state processes are largely driven by past objectives, goals, and criteria that are just not able to keep up to par with the need of existing marketplaces.
Any conglomeration that grows over time will increase the complexity of its business process. Things get more complex as one company acquires another and hence makes processes more complex than before.
The flow of an organization is based on the efficiency of the business process that the organization resides on. Every organization exists based on core underlying processes from being able to create better products, market and sell those products, and continue the selling process with feedback using repetitive sales and an effective product improvement strategy.
The key to clear processes are clearly defined goals that every person in the organization needs to be aware of and conform outputs to.
What’s so screwed up is that organizations can’t keep clear goals or communicate goals so everyone in the work place is just doing whatever they want – hence a process is executed to deliver nothing by an individual or department to meet a customer need – other than what I call “management satisfaction” – whereby outputs are produced to meet the needs of middle managers and executives who are clueless about what the customer really needs.
In manufacturing, processes need to be evaluated along the delivery line of a widget. As the widget goes from one department to another, we successfully deliver a product.
In consulting or service-based organizations, processes are executed by skilled labor whereby one person can produce a work product (document, file, program) in a given and set period of time.
The biggest issue I see in government-like organizations and their processes is that there is really no accountability and no tie to end product that drives revenue – hence anything can be produced to meet someone’s need without the need to produce end product to a particular marketplace. There is circular logic here in that the person producing the end product, the person accepting the end product, and the person consuming the end product – can actually be the same person which is amusing.
What ends up happening is that government organizations end up hiring incorrectly, or bringing on more contractors to “change the light bulb” as necessary. The number of people just siting around and browsing the net increases and organizations wonder where all their money is going.
Presence doesn’t equal performance, yet the process is seen as being efficient despite of itself as long a funding exists. Again – success in spite of itself.
So, what is the one move managers can do to better gain traction of their processes? Get the most optimal understanding of your marketplace that you are delivering to – based on current goals and the results you want to achieve – and bring on or take out resources in alignment with marketplace needs. You to ensure a clear understanding of the marketplace – specifically your customer.
This single assessment of your audience will be the driver for how touch-points in processes need to be fixed. You will realize that resources you are currently working with now are not the resources you need tomorrow. You will realize the performance measures you are working with based on past marketplaces are not the measures you should be achieving with new marketplaces.
If you can get the process in alignment with the current marketplace, you will be on your way towards optimal efficiency and customer satisfaction.