Stemming the tide or opening the floodgates?

Shortly before Christmas I started a discussion in the BPGroup on LinkedIn on why I thought 2009 had been a lost year for process management. As it made on the whole a rather depression read, we’ll not republish the original article (at the moment) but just sum up the main points.

Neglecting to develop a process mindset among the employees and management has not served us well at a time when many companies have had to change their market and internal strategies to survive.

Though process awareness has often been referred to as a soft-skill (and thus something easy to ignore), it is the basis for speedy change, for quick adaption (through understanding) of change – and as such a pre-condition for any sort of improvement. 2009 revealed many companies to be underachievers in that department.

But we’re also somewhat short-changed in the hard-facts department with processes remaining not only independent of but also unaffected by a changing business strategy.

On the process management and business management side, you can but wonder at the lack of foundation for making any sort of process decision. As I referred to in a recent posting on BPM Nexus, best guess and gut feeling are still the predominant factors when it comes to designing processes. Effects and implications of change of one process to another are still largely an unknown quantity.

On the whole, none of these issues present a new insight, so why did I write about them and why did they receive such attention for the community??

Looking back over the past 20 years in which I’ve been involved with business processes I have never come across a situation quite like this. 2009 has clearly had to be a year of designing holding actions, of strengthening the dams. The uncertainty of how the economic situation would develop in 2010 and beyond and how businesses will be affected was no basis to design stable process solutions for an uncertain future. But if 2009 has been about holding actions, 2010 will be about rebuilding: two major changes in requirements, objectives, projects in a two year period. Plus the strain put on employees and management by fast-changing circumstances and processes.

In an earlier posting I cited Gary Comerfords’ 2008 analysis that “There is no doubt in my mind that any company which is not focusing on understanding, managing, and improving it’s business processes is missing a huge opportunity to improve itself”.

What makes 2010 so important for process managers is that with 2009 gone (and lost, as I think) there is not much time left for companies to learn and apply lessons learned. The pressure is on to finally get it right: From process awareness to allocation of responsibility and accountability to business readiness to process experience. Can it be done? Despite my initial post (more of a rant, I freely admit), yes, I think that it can be done – if we start with addressing the right issues. Process management is all about managing, maintaining and increasing efficient and effective value creation – precisely the challenge many companies are facing.

On a final note: Surprisingly (at least to me), I seem to have struck a cord. As far as I can remember, this has been one of the most intense discussions I have seen on the BPGroup on LinkedIn in recent months, so a Thank You to all contributors is very much in order.