Chances are, if you're watching this video, either you or somebody you know, is in the profession of business process management, or BPM. Business process management professionals have a very unique role to play in any organization. They get to see across processes, across the organization - not just siloed departments. This view can bring so much value across the organization. Not to mention that a lot of BPM professionals are fairly smart. Having said all that, why aren't people in the whole entire organization just absolutely raging at their door, wanting them to work at every single project, every single piece of work?
BPM professionals have become ubiquitous in a lot of organizations, but they still suffer from the one challenge, which is, how can their services be continuously of value to an organization? People often question how their role brings in value. Business process management professionals have a unique point of view that stretches across the organization. All organizations tend to have some form of hierarchical structure, which business process management professionals transcend, and are able to give you the viewpoint from a process perspective. They live, they breathe, and they work the process.
Having such a unique point of view from the word go, makes BPM professionals very, very useful in any organization, but here's the thing.
When you think about firefighters, versus those people who are employed to prevent fires, which one of those two roles do you think is more sexy?
I'm guessing most of us said, firefighters. That's true. I would say the same thing. Firefighters resolve, whereas, those people who prevent fires, those people who install the fire hydrants, the smoke detectors, the exit signs, those people are the preventers.
When you've got preventers and resolvers sitting side-by-side, the more sexy heroes are always going to be the resolvers.
This is true in an organization, as well. BPM professionals, we are the preventers. We don't get the limelight like the resolvers do. This is perfectly fine, because the objective of any BPM professional is to prevent issues from happening in the future. There may be issues that you resolve right now, but the intention of true process management is to resolve things that have yet to occur. We're the preventers of future problems.
If you know where you fall within that spectrum of preventer and resolver, you understand the kind of limelight the organization receives you from. If you want to be an effective BPM professional whose door is constantly knocked for help and for support, you need to be able to provide both things.
Be a preventer, and a resolver.