Once Again: Process Work is Strategic Work

Author(s)

Partner, Performance Design Lab
Alan Ramias is a Partner with the Performance Design Lab (PDL), a consulting, coaching and training company that specializes in organizational performance design and improvement. He brings 30 years of consulting experience in the analysis, design and implementation of performance systems. He has worked with organizations in Asia, Europe and North America. He is a co-author of the books White Space Revisited: Creating Value through Process and Rediscovering Value: Leading the 3-D Enterprise to Sustainable Success. Before becoming a management consultant, Alan was an instructional designer, training manager and organizational development manager at Motorola, where he worked for ten years, including as a member of the team that founded Motorola University. Alan led some of the first groundbreaking projects in process improvement that were the genesis for Motorola’s Six Sigma program. Alan joined The Rummler-Brache Group (RBG) in 1991, and led improvement projects in such companies as Shell, Hewlett-Packard, 3M, Citibank, DuPont, Steelcase, Citgo, Hermann Miller, Louisiana-Pacific, Bank One, Microsoft, Chinatrust, and Standard Chartered Bank . He became a Partner and Managing Director of Consulting Services at RBG and was responsible for selecting, training and overseeing RBG’s consultant teams. He also conducted RBG’s process improvement training for such companies as Hughes, DuPont, Shell, ABB, Ericsson, Citicorp, Sun Microsystems, Steelcase, Eli Lilly, Dow Chemical Europe, Dow Chemical South America, Square D, Pioneer Hi-Bred, UOP, 3M and Shell. Alan has presented on a wide variety of topics at numerous conferences, including the following: •“The Dangers of Prefab Models," BBC conference, November 2012 •“Repositioning BPM for Sustainable Success,” keynote presentation at Gartner BPM Conference in London, March 2011 •“Crossroads: How HPT and IT can Improve Organizational Performance,” International Society of Performance Improvement (ISPI) national conference, April 2009 •“How to Make BPM Work (Even in a Recession)”, International Quality & Productivity Conference (IQPC), April 2009 •“The Two Dimensions of an Organization: An Architecture for Achieving Business Results,” Fall ISPI Conference, September 2008. •“Designing the Process-Centered Organization,” ISPI Annual Conference, April 2008. •“BPM Methodologies: Turning the Land of Confusion into Solutions for Your BPM Initiatives”, Gartner BPM Conference, Las Vegas NV, January 2008 •“People, Processes, Technology: Why Can’t They All Get Along?” Shared Insights Conference, April 2007. •“The Origins of Process Improvement and Six Sigma at Motorola,” ISPI Annual Conference, April 2005. SELECTED PUBLICATIONS Ramias, A., "Integrating Process Management," BP Trends, October 2014 Ramias, A.and Wilkins, C., "Baby Steps: Making Process Management a Reality," BP Trends, June 2014 Ramias, A.and Wilkins, C., "Making Process Management a Reality," BP Trends, March 2014 Ramias, A. and Wilkins, C., “Remembering Geary Rummler,”BP Trends, November 2013 Ramias, A. and Wilkins, C., “Location, Location, Location: Does It Matter Where Your Performance Department Reports?,” BP Trends, June 2013 Ramias, A. and Wilkins, C., “Who Does What? Role/Responsibility Charting in Improvement Efforts,” BP Trends, December 2012 Ramias, A. and Wilkins, C., “Uses of the 3-Dimensional Enterprise Model,” BP Trends, September 2012 Ramias, A., “The Mists of Six Sigma’” Performance Xpress, April 2012 (reprinted from BP Trends) Ramias, A. and Wilkins, C., “Reference Models: The Long, Long Shortcut,” BP Trends, March 2012 Ramias, A. and Wilkins, C., “In From Left Field,” BP Trends, January 2012 Ramias, A. and Wilkins, C., “The Process-Centered Organization: Oh, For a Crisis,” BP Trends, September 2011 Ramias, A. and Wilkins, C., “The Process-Centered Organization: Do You Know Where You’re Going?” BP Trends, August 2011 Ramias, A. and Wilkins, C., “The Process-Centered Organization: The Long Road,” BP Trends, May 2011 Ramias, A. and Wilkins, C., “Who is Responsible for Process Performance?,” BP Trends December 2010 Ramias, A. and Wilkins, C., “Building Metrics for Processes,” BP Trends September 2010 Ramias, A. and Wilkins, C., “Measuring Process Performance,” BP Trends), May 2010 Ramias, A. and Wilkins, C., “The Role of the Performance Architect,” BP Trends January 2010 Ramias, A. and Wilkins, C., “What Process Owners Do,” BP Trends, October 2009 Ramias, A. and Wilkins, C., “Varieties of Process Ownership,” BP Trends, July 2009 Ramias, A.J. and Rummler, R., “The Evolution of the Effective Process Framework: A Model for Redesigning Business Processes,” Performance Improvement, November/December 2009 Rummler, G.A, Ramias A.J., and Rummler R.A., “Potential Pitfalls on the Road to a Process-Managed Organization,” Performance Improvement Journal (published as a two-part article in April and May/June 2009 issues). Rummler, G., and Ramias, A., “A Framework for Defining and Designing the Structure of Work”, BP Trends, (published as a 3-part paper in April and September 2008 and January 2009). Rummler, G. and Ramias, A., “The IT-Business Gap: Another Root Cause,” BP Trends, December 2007. Ramias, A., “What is a Process?” BPM Institute.org October 2007. Ramias, A., “When You Say ‘Process,’ You Mean…?” BPM Institute.org, August 2006. Ramias, A., “The Mists of Six Sigma,” BP Trends, October 2005.

A question that forever nags at thinkers and practitioners of BPM is its relationship to strategy.  In a recent book entitled Questioning BPM?*, one of 15 questions explored in the book was “Is BPM a strategic tool?”  Eleven authors agree there is, or should be, a strong relationship.  

The most common viewpoint among them is that BPM is necessary to an organization’s ability to execute its strategies.  No matter what the strategy is or how it came into being, it simply sits on a shelf gathering dust unless there are actions taken to carry it out.  And as soon as you enter the realm of action, an organization’s business processes are essential in executing the strategic intent.  To carry out a corporate-wide strategy necessitates doing so through a company’s large-scale end-to-end processes, and that in turn requires recognizing, designing and managing those processes, which is the essence of BPM. 

Effective strategy implementation also requires a particular mindset and behaviors.  For one thing, BPM Institute editorial director Andrew Spanyi argues in the same book**, it requires “cross-departmental collaboration [because] no one executive typically has sufficient authority” to achieve a corporate-wide strategy alone.  In other words, the company’s executives must see beyond the boundaries of their individual kingdoms, and the best way to do that is to help them comprehend the network of processes that cross those boundaries and depend on cross-functional work.

So while there is broad agreement that BPM and strategy are, or should be, linked, there are different ways of thinking about what the elements are that need to be linked and how best to forge the linkages.

In his book The Concept of Corporate Strategy***, Kenneth Andrews differentiates between corporate strategy, which is about figuring out what markets a company wants to be in, what products and services, what goals and objectives and plans—in essence, what a company wants to achieve—versus competitive strategy—how to win against the competition, how to position oneself in the target markets.  This implies there is a sequence to strategic thinking.  Assuming one would want the strategic plan to include both the corporate strategy and the competitive strategy, a logical sequence could be:

 

  1. Define the corporate strategy
  2. Define the competitive strategy
  3. Develop the strategic Plan

 

So where would BPM fit in this sequence?  Think of BPM as comprising all of the company’s internal workings, the sub-systems, if you will, of the organizational system.  There are three major sub-systems:  

 

  • The “work sub-system” (the network of business processes, i.e., its business process architecture), 
  • The “governance sub-system” (the policies, practices, processes and mechanisms by which the company’s leaders plan, lead, monitor, supervise and control the enterprise), 
  • The “resources sub-system” (all of the human, physical, and financial assets of the company)****.

 

 
This is everything necessary to carry out the plan, to execute the strategy, which implies the sequence of action to create and execute strategy would be:

 

  1. Define the corporate strategy
  2. Define the competitive strategy
  3. Develop the strategic plan
  4. Align the Internal sub-systems to carry out the strategy

 

This seems to make sense if we view BPM as being all about the tactics and mechanics of carrying out the strategic plan.  However, if we look to thought leaders in strategy, we might question this sequence and the positioning of BPM in it.

Michael Porter is recognized as one of the most influential thinkers about strategy, specifically competitive strategy. In his seminal article, What is Strategy?, ***** he argues that the essence of competitive strategy is finding a position different from a company’s competitors and then shaping and aligning all of company’s “activities” (and by implication all of its resources) to carry out that strategy.  BPM advocates cite this statement often as the clearest expression of the link between processes (“all its activities”) and strategy.

But if this is so, when in the sequence would one first have to consider the three sub-systems of the organization?  It’s not just a matter of aligning those sub-systems to the strategy.  You would have to be thinking about them as you create the strategy itself.  Exactly what resources do we have that are strategically important?  What gives us the edge over our competitors?  Which of our business processes are strategic in nature?  If we are in a race to create great new products before anyone else, aren’t our research, ideation, product design and product development processes strategically important?  This is what Porter seems to be saying.

So a better sequence might be:

 

  1. Define the corporate strategy
  2. Define the competitive strategy
  3. Define (that is, understand) our internal sub-systems
  4. Develop the strategic plan
    5. Align (e.g., allocate, invest, restructure, etc.) the Internal systems to carry out the strategy

 

In this sequence the link between BPM and strategy is even more significant.  BPM is an essential part of strategy development as well as of strategy execution.  It becomes the essence of strategic thinking and planning, and as well as the means for strategy execution.

 

References:

* Harmon Paul and Roger Treager, Questioning BPM? 109 answers by 33 authors to 15 questions about business process management . Meghan-Kiffer Press, Tampa, FL, 2016. 

** Ibid, pp. 83-87. 

*** Andrews, Kenneth, The Concept of Corporate Strategy, Dow-Jones Irwin, 2nd Edition ,1980 

**** These three sub-systems were borrowed from our book Rediscovering Value:  Leading the 3-D Enterprise to Sustainable Success, Rummler, Geary A., Alan J. Ramias and Cherie L. Wilkins, Jossey-Bass, 2011.  In the book, the sub-systems were called the three “dimensions” of every organization. 

****Porter, Michael, “What is Strategy?” Harvard Business Review, Nov.-Dec. 1996

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