A company is defined as the sum of three values: resources, processes and priorities (RPP). Everything of value can be classified into these three categories.
If you want to see employees reaching for their phones in a meeting, start talking about process. For some, just the word itself evokes cold, robotic compliance to set patterns that seek to override human intuition and discernment. While others may see it as a requirement to manage the freneticism experienced in fast moving environments, it doesn’t leave them warm and fuzzy.
If you asked employees to play word association, you’d likely get words back like “tax”, “friction” and “pain.” In many cases, these employees are not wrong. We’ve filled our businesses with stagnant, low-value processes that have led employees to tune-out. Slavish adherence to factory-like workflow that has reduced employee value and engagement. Very few people wake up in the morning excited to go to work and “follow process.”
So how did we get here?
While I don’t have the definitive answer, it does seem that at some point “process” became associated primarily with short-term tactics – a way to coordinate important but repeated, and therefore non-strategic, activity. Process as a way to handle work where all the thinking has been wrung out of the problem and we’ve “figured it out” – now it’s just about working the process. Set it and forget it.
And more importantly – where do we go now?
An unlikely source of inspiration might be a business management theory that’s been around for decades.
Six Sigma was en vogue in the 90s/00’s primarily due to GE CEO Jack Welch’s public embrace of it. He credited much of GE’s success to adopting Six Sigma practices. While SS has less straight line applicability in the digital world, it was heavily focused on quality control as a way to build value – the approach to building value through process development may offer an antidote to process malaise.
Six Sigma practitioners pinpoint a company’s most critical processes, i.e., the processes that generate value, and organize operations around them. They combine it with a heavy focus on measurement and experimentation. They look to understand where and how the company creates value and then set out to optimize via testing new approaches. At the same, they measure outcomes and tilt the organization focus to support this approach. Process is no longer is static, it becomes more dynamic.
Sounds like an novel idea but there’s a catch.
Today, most companies organize around functional areas (Tech/IT, Sales/Marketing, Finance etc) not processes which, in turn, requires these processes to be executed via cross-functional collaborative efforts. This leads directly to process stagnation as the effort to coordinate across multiple functional groups eats up energy and mindshare and stifles innovation.
To address this reality, companies will create “matrix” teams but anyone who has worked within this framework has experienced the challenges and friction points including ownership, lack of accountability, chain of command confusion etc. Not to mention that you now have a company organized in two different ways at the same time. Not ideal.
Despite that there’s still a way to move forward.
Start by taking a top down approach and pinpoint where your company creates its unique value. Start with a high-level statement:
Is it a novel product/service?
A GTM strategy that elevates a commoditized offering?
World-class customer success and support?
This will require deeper internal discussion, but once the team reaches a consensus, the next step is to break down the process into its fundamental components. Then, rebuild it using measurable units – that is, we’ll ensure each step can be assessed for performance and value impact.
With a baseline in place, employees can focus on pushing new approaches and innovating at all levels to improve performance and increase value.
To learn more about how to take your company’s processes from stagnant to strategic or any other topic, connect with me via LinkedIn or set up a call.