Aligning Process Management with Enterprise Excellence

I’m guessing that, given you’ve taken the time out of your day to read a blog on process management, you understand the importance of having clear and current documented processes. What we all need to remember though is that while process documentation is a necessity, it will do nothing on its own. This is why so many process management initiatives fizzle out – organisations create hundreds of process maps, but having these process maps in isolation doesn’t tangibly benefit the business, so the business loses interest, stops mapping and updating the maps, and the initiative is over.  

Whenever I kick-off a new project, one of the first questions that I ask my client is What does Enterprise Excellence/ Operational Excellence mean to you? And the answers that I get are generally revolve around:   

  • Having a process driven culture  
  • Having one way of working  
  • Ensuring that everyone knows how they should be doing their job  

To me this is the problem. Too often we confuse Enterprise Excellence with Process Management. The reality is that Process Management is a part of Enterprise Excellence, they’re not the same. With that in mind, we need to remind ourselves that our focus needs to be on achieving (or moving towards) Enterprise Excellence and therefore, our process management activities need to be performed in support of this cause.  

This of course raises the question, what is Enterprise Excellence?  

Enterprise Excellence

This is SA Partner’s Enterprise Excellence model and is made up of three core components, Purpose, Process, and People all in support of delivering Customer Results.   

Purpose: This is why your organisation exists and the strategy that you have developed to achieve your purpose. 

Process: This is the work that you do. It should be standardised and visible so that at any given point in time everyone should know exactly what they should be doing and how they should be doing it.  

People: You need to ensure that you have the right people in place with the capability, capacity, and mindset to perform our processes.    

 

When we happy map, what happens is that the Process component becomes disconnected from Enterprise Excellence. This causes us to end up with process documentation and assign process management work in isolation which fails to deliver customer results.   

Happy Mapping

As a result, what we need to do is ensure that our process management activities are tightly aligned to our Enterprise Excellence efforts. To do this, what we’ve found is that the connectors between Purpose, Process, and People are of vital importance.  

 

Align 

Once we’ve determined our purpose and developed a strategy to achieve our purpose, we now need to ensure that our processes are aligned. This helps ensure that everyone is working on the right things and solves the problem of being busy, but rather than doing ‘busy work’ that doesn’t move the needle. As such, as part of our process management activities, we need to question if our as-is processes are aligned with our strategy and contribute to us achieving our purpose and, where they don’t, decide if the process needs to be changed or eliminated. Additionally, while our purpose will typically stay the same over time, our strategy will evolve. As our strategy evolves our process management activities needs to involve reviewing our existing processes and determining how they need to change in-order to remain aligned to our revised strategy. Once we’ve determined our purpose and developed a strategy to achieve our purpose, we now need to ensure that our processes are aligned. This helps ensure that everyone is working on the right things and solves the problem of being busy, but rather than doing ‘busy work’ that doesn’t move the needle. As such, as part of our process management activities, we need to question if our as-is processes are aligned with our strategy and contribute to us achieving our purpose and, where they don’t, decide if the process needs to be changed or eliminated. Additionally, while our purpose will typically stay the same over time, our strategy will evolve. As our strategy evolves our process management activities needs to involve reviewing our existing processes and determining how they need to change in-order to remain aligned to our revised strategy.

 

Improve  

We need to start by capturing our As-Is processes. Not everyone will like it, but it has to be done. As-Is process capture is however just the starting point. Once we’ve captured our As-Is processes we need to look at them and question if they are fit for purpose? Particularly if you are starting with a culture that doesn’t appreciate process many of these processes won’t be followed so you need to invest energy in standardising them to make sure that the lived process aligns with the documented process. Also, these as-is processes will likely have waste, so you should also be thinking about how you can make them more efficient. Finally, as the environment in which these processes evolve, so too must your processes, so you need to ensure that your processes are continuously improved.   

None of this improvement work will just happen though. As the model indicates, improvement isn’t just related to Process but also People. Your people need to have the capability (e.g. Problem Solving and Lean Improvement skills) to participate in process improvement as well as have time allocated away from working in the business to working on the business.  

 

Engage 

Having a purpose and strategy defined and understood by your Executive team is important, but for it to mean anything it needs to be understood and believed by your entire workforce. Part of your strategy should be Enterprise Excellence, the idea that the way that you work matters, not just the work that you do. And this needs to be communicated, understood, and believed by everyone in your organisation. They need to understand why we are doing this and be willing participants.  

 

To summerise then, if you want your process management activities to deliver customer results, you can’t just be a happy mapper and create process documentation. You need to ensure that your process management activities are part of an Enterprise Excellence strategy which is done by aligning your processes with your purpose, building an improvement framework and creating capability and capacity in your people, and finally engaging your people with the role that Enterprise Excellence has in achieving your purpose.  

 

Please contact me on ishan.sellahewa@sapartners.com with any questions.

 

Does Process Management Hinder Creativity?

Often, when I talk about process management and explain the benefits of having clear processes with detailed work instructions, I’ll get pushback like ‘we hire professionals to do a job, we don’t want to tell them exactly how to do it’.  

In short, the push back is on how much detail the process needs. The concern is we run the risk of turning competent professionals into robots and in doing so kill creativity.  

Process vs Creativity 

So, does process kill creativity? Potentially yes. This is something that we need to consider and, depending on the process, find balance between giving our teams discretion to bring their own flavour and personality to the way that they work on the one hand, and following standard and best practice on the other.  

As a real example, at SA Partners we are forging ahead with Digital Transformation and cross training our global consulting team to deliver these new services. As we expand, I’m asking myself how much guidance should I provide? When documenting our delivery processes, I could include scripts and recordings of how I would run a session, but doing so means that we run the risk of consultants mechanically running sessions which are not engaging or effective. But we could go too far in the other direction. The methodologies that I use have been polished over the years by myself and my predecessors with a focus on delivering the most impact to clients in the shortest amount of time – why would we not want our wider consulting team to benefit from these years of experience?   

How to make the decision 

Let’s take an example:  

Process mapped in Nintex Process Manager

This process has been kept very high level.  In Activity 3 task a, the Director of Legal is asked to ‘review and approve the contract’ without any further details provided on what this review involves and what good looks like.  

In this case, the argument can be made that as the Director of Legal, this person will have sufficient experience to complete a contract review using their professional discretion and further details are not required.  

 

Compare that approach with a small tweak as follows:  

Process mapped in Nintex Process Manager In this example, attached to Activity 3 task a, a work instruction has been attached explaining exactly how the contract needs to be assessed.  

There are a few benefits of this approach, specifically:  

  • Because we are leaving less to professional discretion, we can reduce risk by formalising exactly how the process is performed  
  • By making this process more mechanical we may be able to reassign the review from an experienced Director to an early-stage Associate and reduce the cost of the process while maintaining quality  
  • By formalising what good looks like, it will be easier to explain to the Sales Executive what is required for the contract to be approved, and thus reduce rework  

 

In making this decision, it’s no one size fits all approach. If this organisation works on a few complex seven figure contracts at any given time, it may be impossible to codify what a review involves. A highly experienced legal practitioner would use their decades of experience to perform an analysis. Conversely, if this organisation is more transactional, reviewing hundreds of low value standardised contracts, relying on expensive, experienced legal practitioners will make the process untenable. As a result, tightly defining how it’s run, and allowing it to be run by cheaper resources, is more appropriate.  

 

Your decision-making should include several factors:  

  • How complicated is the process? Is there significant variance between cycles?   
  • Is there a risk if the processes are not performed in a defined way? 
  • Is creativity or standardisation more important for this process?  
  • Is there a requirement (e.g., regulation) that the process must be performed by someone with certain credentials and/ or experience?  
  • Is there a cost pressure on this process for it to be tenable?  

 

Personally, I prefer more detail. When mapping our internal processes I will likely include recordings, instructor guides, and talking points. That way, if a consultant in Australia needs urgent support while I’m asleep, they’ll be able to easily go into our single source of truth (Nintex Process Manager) and self-serve. However, I would also pair this with a culture that encourages consultants to use their own judgement to deviate from the guidance where they feel it’s appropriate and, in doing so, hopefully achieve the best of both worlds.     

 

Finding this balance can be difficult so I’m happy to offer a free one-hour process conversion workshop. All you need to do is come with a process in mind and we’ll work together to create meaningful process documentation that has just the right amount of detail based on the flexibility that you require. Drop me an email at the details below and we can get something scheduled.  

 

 

Ishan Sellahewa

Digital Transformation Business Manager

ishan.sellahewa@sapartners.com

+44 (0) 79263 89523

sapartners.com

LinkedIn

Why Do An Assessment?

Enterprise Excellence is the goal for most, however so few organsitions achieve it, and even fewer sustain it. Having worked with many organsiations over the years on this journey I know it is rarely a simple journey, or one that can be copied from others. It’s not something a leader can impose, or build on their own as it’s not just about deploying systems and processes, it is about how people think, act and behave. 

With the right approach and the right leadership, it’s a journey that is possible. However, the journey there can look very different from one organisation to the next, and navigating your way towards “world-class” can often feel overwhelming.  

It doesn’t need to be… 

Step one on the journey is to truly understand your ‘Ideal Future State’, to do this ask yourself a number of questions: 

  • What does good look like? 
  • What does “Excellence” mean for us as an organisation? 
  • What will you hear, see and feel when you get there? 
  • What do the Ideal Behaviours look and feel like? 

To do this effectively it is worth considering using SHINGO as a framework as the model and philosophy focus on how to create the most effective systems that will in turn drive the right behaviours enabling you to achieve your ideal results.  The Shingo Discover Excellence course, or Introduction to Shingo can be really valuable as a starting point. 

Understanding the Gap 

After you understand where you are going it’s necessary to get a clear picture of where you are now, so you can determine the gap.  Ask the following questions: 

  • What is your current level of Enterprise Excellence maturity? 
  • What are your strengths? 
  • What are your weaknesses (your opportunities for improvement) 
  • Do your systems enable or disable the right behaviours? 
  • Do the Leadership and Engagement Systems support Continuous Improvement? 

An Enterprise Excellence assessment can provide you with this insight. This assessment delves deeply into all aspects of your organisation – it’s systems, processes, and behaviours. We use an assessment aligned to both SHINGO and our own Enterprise Excellence Model. 

Identifying your Roadmap  

Once you’ve established where you are, and where you want to go then a clear roadmap can be created to get you there. It’s this roadmap that then acts as a map that helps you navigate the journey from A-B and an assessment is a waste of time unless you translate this into a plan of improvement. It’s only then that you can start to bring an Enterprise Excellence journey to life for your organisation. 

At S A Partners, we have supported countless organisations on this journey.   

To find out what this could look like for you, don’t hesitate to contact me: 

Megan.james@sapartners.com  

You may also find the following resources useful: