The Leonardo Blog

Every organisation exists to deliver value (products, services or something less tangible) to ‘customers’ and other stakeholders. However strategic intent is defined, it is about delivering value both ‘outside’ (customers, suppliers, regulators, community etc.) and ‘inside’ (staff, shareholders, partners, franchisees etc.). We traditionally manage via the organisation chart, yet no entity shown on that chart can, by itself, deliver external value. In reality, we create, accumulate and deliver value by collaborating across the organisation. While resources are managed vertically with the organisation chart; value is created and delivered horizontally via the process architecture.

Everybody signs up for continuous improvement. The other side of that coin is that in order to continuously improve, we must be continuously finding things that are not working as well as they might. That may not sit as comfortably; it might be quite challenging to be proactively uncovering problems. If process improvement activity is to deliver its maximum benefit, we must be continuously discovering problems—and their causes, and finding new opportunities—and the constraints on their realization. The fabled directive “Don't tell me about problems, tell me about solutions” may not be so useful after all1. No problem? That could be the biggest problem.

It’s Time For most organizations, the time has passed when improving performance can be achieved by ‘simply’ reducing budgets and assuming those affected will adjust to the change. After years of budget cuts and efficiency dividends, the easy changes are done, contingency resources are extinct, and further change is deep, structural, and difficult. The need to ‘do more with less’ seems both inevitable and impossible.

A Business Process Architecture (BPA) is the primary artifact of process management and improvement. If you don't have a BPA, you aren't doing process management. If you don't have a documented and agreed understanding of the relationships and interdependencies between your key business processes, then you can't be sure you are really doing effective process improvement. Cross-functional business processes are the only way any organization can deliver value (products or services) to customers, and other stakeholders outside the organization. This gives the BPA primacy. A BPA discovers, defines, and documents the value pathways. More than just a picture or a model, the Business Process Architecture is a daily aid to strategic and operational management in an organization focused on continuous improvement and delivery of service excellence.

Most organizations fail to sustain effective process-based management because they fail to firmly embed business process governance.