Synopsis: In his 1990 classic HBR article “Reengineering Work: Don’t Automate, Obliterate,” Michael Hammer argued that IT must be used to drive radical process innovation. Unfortunately, these large IT investments tend to deliver disappointing results because companies mechanize old ways of doing business and employees feel victimized. The best way to solve both of these problems — and make innovation efforts stick — is not to impose a new process or technology system, but rather have front-line employees drive the change.
Example: ING follows the sequence of people, then process, then technology. By staying with manual workflows longer than others they have a clear idea of what people need, and they avoid automating workarounds and waste.
Questions: How have you seen organizations use IT to drive process innovation? Were front-line people the drivers or the victims?
(Source: blogs.hbr.org)
Synposis: A company must get its sales, marketing, research and development, operations, and even customers and suppliers to work together. Yet teamwork across organizational boundaries is unnatural. The natural tendency of organizations is to optimize locally — within a business unit or department, rather than optimizing for the global customer experience or the enterprise.
Examples: A chief medical officer of a primary care practice pulls an extended team together to map the current process for hip and knee replacements and redesign it. MITRE deploys a new social media platform to build teamwork between its 7,600 employees and an external network of academics, former employees, vendors, industry, sponsors and front-line beneficiaries of its research.
Question: What experience have you had in building teamwork across organizational boundaries?
(Source: blogs.hbr.org)
If you have five minutes, you might be interested in watching my video interview on the role that the Human Resources function can play in contributing to process improvement.
Summary: Should your HR department play a greater role in leading process change? Most definitely, says consultant and researcher Brad Power. People are critical in sustaining strategy and process improvements, he argues, and that’s where human resource departments can really play a greater role. In this PEX Network video interview Power explains the role he envisages HR playing in process improvement and discusses companies that are effectively involving their HR departments in achieving sustainable culture and process change.
Examples: IBM, Lowes, Virginia Mason, ThedaCare
(Source: processexcellencenetwork.com)
Synopsis: At some leading companies IT developers have migrated from traditional step-by-step software development approaches to using cross-functional teams to make quick, small changes to systems. This new approach has worked very effectively at a team level, and some companies have expanded this approach to their IT organization and engaged their business partners. I see a big opportunity for senior executives to embrace the process innovation successes that are bubbling up from their IT organizations.
Examples: ING transitions from traditional step-by-step (“waterfall”) to quick, small changes to systems (“agile scrum”) methods. Fifty companies have visited Nationwide Insurance in the last 12 months to learn how the company has embedded process improvement into the work of the IT function.
Question: Have you seen IT functions that are leading the way in their companies to make cross-functional process innovation happen?
(Source: blogs.hbr.org)
Synopsis: The April 2007 issue of the Harvard Business Review included an article by Michael Hammer on his Process and Enterprise Maturity Model (PEMM). This process management assessment tool joins a number of other process maturity models in the market, but Hammer’s PEMM brings some unique advantages: his reputation as a provocative thought leader in business reengineering, and the credibility of the Harvard Business Review with a general management audience. Despite a few weaknesses, if you’re considering conducting a process management assessment and would like to get the attention of general managers, the PEMM may be your best choice.
(Source: bptrends.com)
Synopsis: IT can make business processes much more efficient, and lock in process improvements. Yet IT can also limit speed and flexibility. I see three ways an IT organization can be highly responsive to managers who must make process changes: 1. Have a highly-collaborative working relationship with process improvement leaders, and adopt their techniques. 2. Prioritize IT resources to be able to make process changes quickly. 3. Build an IT infrastructure that makes changes easy and turns over control to line managers.
Examples: CSX uses “Lean Techniques” to help IT, Morningstar prioritizes IT resources for rapid response, IBM returns control of system changes to users.
Question: What ways have you seen IT groups become more responsive to business process changes?
(Source: blogs.hbr.org)
Synopsis: To deliver more value, the human resources function needs to spend more time accelerating operational improvement and less time on its traditional administrative and compliance activities. HR can accelerate process improvement by (1) bringing people into HR with extensive operational improvement experience, (2) streamlining and offloading HR’s lower-value administrative services, and (3) building an organizational development group in HR that includes operational improvement.
Examples: IBM, Lowe’s, Faxton-St. Luke’s Healthcare, and Martin Memorial Health Systems
Questions: What HR functions have you seen refocus their activities on process improvement? How did they do it, and how did they fare?
(Source: blogs.hbr.org)
Synopsis: You might think being fit and agile and constantly improving your operational performance would be something every organization should be pursuing, but I find that organizations pay attention to improvement for a few years and then lose interest — what I call Process Attention Deficit Disorder (PADD). It’s a tendency to adopt one improvement methodology or another — Total Quality Management, Business Reengineering, Six Sigma, or Lean — and then drop it after a few years and shift to another strategic program.
Questions: Have you seen any positive deviants — organizations that go out of their way to consistently focus on operational improvement activities over many years? If so, what do they look like? And what role do functions, like IT, play in accelerating their improvement activities?
(Source: businessagility.com)
Synopsis: HR can propel or inhibit process improvement because it has an outsized influence on people: how they are recruited, rewarded, and developed. HR has become instrumental to the success of IBM, Lowe’s, and Harvard Vanguard starting at the top. All three companies have tough, business-savvy, and politically astute HR chiefs who are a vital partner to the CEO. They possess two key traits: operational experience and selflessness.
Examples: HR leaders at Lowe’s and Tufts Medical Center have backgrounds in process improvement. Lily Benjamin of Broadridge pushes recognition for success onto the team.
Question:What characteristics have you seen to be critical for HR chiefs who have played big and beneficial roles in organizational process improvement?
(Source: blogs.hbr.org)
With the economy in the doldrums and many companies cautiously approaching the year ahead – cutbacks, layoffs and cost cutting appear to be back on the agenda. But is there a right and a wrong way to make cost savings?
In this PEX Process Excellence Network Process Perspectives podcast, Brad Power, a consultant and researcher in process innovation, explains why he thinks many companies go about cost cutting in the wrong way, arguing that companies need to start thinking long term about improvements that cut the waste (rather than people’s jobs).
(Source: processexcellencenetwork.com)
