|
Developing a new Business Operations Platform (BOP)
“BPR - the fad that forgot people” (Thomas H Davenport ~ One of the creators of BPR ~ Fastcompany.com)
Taylor (bottom up) and Fayol (top down) started it all, way back in the early years of the twentieth century. First there was Work Study; then Automation; followed by Work-flow; Enterprise Resource Planning; Business Process Reengineering and now Business Process Management. Part of the problem, as suggested by the quotation from Thomas Davenport, is that these mechanistic approaches to productivity improvement have their limitations. What next?
Well the future is here, and the change is as dramatic as it is important. Mechanistic processes give way to taking people, their know-how and their physical, intellectual and emotional energy into the equation, instead of sidelining this most precious asset of the organisation. It is all about innovation - in processes and business models as well as in products and services.
Engaging people in process and business model innovation, NOW, is critical. Key innovations are coming from India and China, where businesses do not have the baggage of more traditional organisations in the already-developed countries. It is morning – start running!
First the issues
Scarce resources are strategically important, for example, good processes. Good processes and good process management are often scarce. So what do we so often do? We follow Fayol and design new processes using a top-down process. And then add in layers of detailed controls that check against the achievement of dozens of KPIs. Great idea - but it does not work. That model is just another manifestation of tired old command and control management that was - maybe - good for the industrial era, but not for today's knowledge-enabled workplace.
It is impossible to legislate for every exception, but process design often tries to do just that. The aim is to produce stability, predictability and repeatability. But rigid adherence to process design just produces hidden chaos, as good hearted people try to handle all the exceptions. And process automation excludes know how and intelligence – both required for dynamic exception handling.
“One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries.” A A Milne
Excessively prescriptive processes are a denial of the need for innovation. That can only come from using unstructured data through a process of discovery and exploration. There is a gulf between goal-oriented behavioural guidelines and bureaucratic prescriptions. The former enable complex, adaptive strategies to be deployed; the latter often produce little more than malicious obedience!
Avoidance of failure guarantees failure
Most innovations fail. But most companies that fail to innovate also fail. There was a time when innovation was required for staying ahead of the competition; now it is a prerequisite for survival.
Moreover, while many people think about innovation as just applying to products and services, successful businesses now innovate in business processes and business models as well. So, who should be innovating in this way? The answer is everyone – managers; employees; customers; suppliers; people in the supply chain – everyone who has a stake in the success of the enterprise.
The challenge becomes about enabling innovation, as that cannot be 'commanded and controlled' either. Innovation depends on a clear focus on a problem or opportunity. It needs new insights and perspectives, often from people collaborating across functional boundaries. It often involves creative destruction, targeting old norms. It needs serial innovation – one-off events seldom take us anywhere truly exciting. It needs comfort with handling risky decisions.
In troubled time, the target of process innovation needs to include squeezing out time and energy. It needs to eliminate complex and non-core activities. Redundancy and duplication must go. Skinny processes that enable key business services are a priority. Above all, innovation must anticipate the needs that customers don't even know they have – yet.
But all the evidence is that there is little, if any, correlation between funding and innovation. Deep, structural changes in the way that things get done do not arise from throwing money at the challenge. They do flow from intellectual capital that is released and directed at a problem.
|
