The Leonardo Blog

Process performance measures are the ‘vital signs’ of organizational health, providing a current status assessment, giving clues to possible health issues, and showing progress towards recovery. A government organization implementing a new service did a lot of planning, created a large number of process models, and had many sessions with a wide range of stakeholders. Green lights everywhere, so the service was launched with appropriate ‘ribbon cutting’. Two days later, all were relieved that the launch had gone well; two weeks later, there was a slowly rising murmur of complaint; two months later, service delivery was in virtual gridlock and the murmur was a cacophony. A month after that, it was finally discovered that a key process in the service delivery was often failing, causing significant rework and introducing inordinately long delays. Further analysis found ways to reduce the delays by 95%. After resolving the backlog, normal service delivery resumed. Customer, and staff, memories of the fiasco will, however, never be erased.

Senior Consultant Indrajit Chaudhuri has created this EPC diagram that explains the magnificent game of Test Cricket to beginners who carry a certain fascination for a process approach.

In my previous articles, I suggested that there is a finite set of compelling reasons for adopting process-based management - a relatively small number of persuasive arguments from which every person and organization draws. My hypothesis is that every organization adopting a process-based management approach does so because one or more of these reasons resonates with its circumstances. I further suggested that the set of causal reasons is quite small and a Compelling Reason Body of Knowledge would be a valuable resource in the quest to develop process thinking and doing. To refresh your memory, here is my suggested list of reasons or expected benefits that persuade organizations to the process view.

Not every organization was negatively impacted by the Global Financial Crisis (GFC). Some still have strong growth targets. Many others are still working their way back to positive growth.