Business Process Management
It sounds thrilling. Business Process Management, or the even sexier acronym, BPM. How could you not want some of that? I can feel the humour and goodwill evaporating as I write about it.
The problem with BPM is that it falls into the category of dull and unimportant for most people. Dull and unimportant is not a good place to be. My challenge is to move it in your mind to interesting and important, something you will want to worry about.
It is a tough challenge. Do you think I will achieve it?
Only brush the teeth you want to keep
This is a phrase my dentist used to use. His point was you don’t have to brush your teeth, but it is important that you do. The same is true of BPM.
Business Process Management is about one thing, making things clear. Making it clear to people how things should and do work. It isn’t sexy, it is just about getting your act together, and you get your act together by being clear about the answers to 6 simple questions:
- What does your customer want?
- How do you deliver that?
- Who does what?
- How do you know it is happening?
- What could go wrong?
- What stops it from going wrong?
It is vital you can answer these questions. If you can’t, you won’t convince me (or anybody else) that you have got your act together. You won’t convince me that the people in your organisation know how or why things are done. If people don’t know how or why things are done, it is safe to assume they aren’t being done well.
Have I covered the first hurdle? Have I moved BPM from unimportant to important? I hope so.
1. What Does Your Customer Want?
This is the “Sherlock Question” as in “No Shit Sherlock”. It sounds straightforward until you dig into it a little.
Who is your customer?
Is it the actual customer? Is it the next person down the line, the internal customer? Is it the business shareholders? Is it the business employees? Is it the regulator? How on earth can you keep all those people happy? The answer is easy. Always worry about the paying customer who hands over the money. That is the one we need to keep sweet; if you do that, the others should fall in line.
What do they want?
The answer to that is simple to find out:
- Ask them. When was the last time you sat down and asked some customers if you were giving them what they wanted?
- Listen to them. The easiest way is to leaf through your complaints. That is a relatively “straightforward and to the point” feedback mechanism. What do your complaints say? Do they have a pattern? What is the most significant source of dissatisfaction? Do you know? I don’t mean “think you know”. Have you got the facts at your fingertips?
- Write down what they want, and create a specification. The specification is your promise to your customers. Is it written in a way that the customer would agree with it? A service level agreement or SLA is not the same thing. Just because you can answer 90% of letters within five working days doesn’t mean your customer cares.
The aim is to ask probing questions and move away from generalities to specifics. Be clear about what it is your customer wants.
2. How Do You Deliver That?
My daughters love to play games. It is a bit wearing. One of my staples is Chinese whispers. It will keep them and their friends happy for a good 20 minutes. It is a good children’s game. The thing that amazes me, though, is that we love to play it as adults. It is called “on-the-job training” or a “handover”. The adult version of the game is slightly different. Imagine that your boss has given you something complicated to do. He then passes you over to Andy, who has done it for a while, and he will explain. Andy learned how from Bev, and Clive taught Bev. Clive was shown the ropes by Debs 8 years ago. Debs, of course, has long since retired. How likely is it that Debs and Andy did things the same way?
There are four simple ways to win this game.
- Write it down — in management speak, these are “work instructions”. Specific, clear, relevant instructions tell people how to do the job.
- Draw a picture; a picture tells a thousand words. Some people would call that picture a process map. Don’t get hung up about process mapping standards. It is more important to have some excellent clear (that word again) diagrams that show people what to do. If you ever visit Dominos Pizza, look at their pictures to show people where to put the salami on the pizza.
- Train people — how is that for radical thought?
- Practice, and repeat the steps with the trainer when the heat isn’t on.
Tell me, I’ll forget, Show me, I’ll remember, Involve me, I’ll understand
Chinese Proverb
3. Who Is Accountable?
This is a little story about four people named Everybody, Somebody, Anybody, and Nobody.
There was an important job to be done and Everybody was sure that Somebody would do it.
Anybody could have done it, but Nobody did it.
Somebody got angry about that because it was Everybody’s job.
Everybody thought that Anybody could do it, but Nobody realised that Everybody wouldn’t do it.
It ended up that Everybody blamed Somebody when Nobody did what Anybody could have done.
Anon
Sorry, that was a bit cute, but is everyone clear about who should do what?
- Who sends the paperwork?
- Who do the requirements get passed to?
- Who signs off the training material?
- Who authorises the payment?
Are you clear? Do your staff members know? It might be evident to you, but that doesn’t mean it is apparent to them — unless you have telepathy as one of your critical recruitment criteria. If roles and responsibilities aren’t clear (and it is causing you a problem), write them down. Who is accountable, who is responsible, who needs to be consulted, who needs to be informed? As a general rule, use roles and not names, then it won’t be as necessary to keep updating things as people move on.
4. How Do You Know It Is Happening?
The answer is simple, measure it. But measurement is not easy. There are some simple guidelines to follow:
Only measure the critical few things. It is easy to fall into the trap of measuring everything that moves, just in case, but it doesn’t help if you have 1001 customer satisfaction measures. You can’t see the wood for the trees. The critical measures will drop out of the questions you asked your customer about what they wanted.
Have balanced measures. There is a lot of talk about “balanced scorecards”, but what does that mean? I used to work for a credit card company. One of the key measures is how much money did they lend. Lending money is good if you are a bank; it is how you make money. The problem is that lending money by itself is easy; the tricky bit is getting it back. Focusing on one part of your business at the expense of the other can be disastrous.
It is worth remembering that what gets measured drives behaviour.
Tell me how you measure me, and I will tell you how I will behave
Eliyahu M. Goldratt
As part of its efforts to cut overfishing in the North Sea, the government measured (and reduced) the number of licenses it handed out to trawler owners.
- Fewer licenses, fewer trawlers, less fishing, went the logic.
- Fewer licenses, fewer (but bigger, more efficient) trawlers, and more fishing, went the reality.
So measure a few balanced outcomes and check your customers are getting what they expect.
5. What Could Go Wrong?
Risk assessment is a funny thing. Some people love it; they love to feel that they have thought through all the angles. They love to feel in control. Other people curl up and lose the will to live. I fall squarely into the curled-up camp. However, it is a simple, painless thing, and the rewards outweigh the cost.
Take the process of making a cup of tea. What could go wrong? I have pulled together a quick risk assessment below. I have identified what could go wrong for each step, and I have rated the likelihood of it happening and the impact. Then for each risk (or eventuality), I have given it a score by multiplying the probability by the impact.
The most significant risk is that I spill boiling water on myself. That is an interesting observation, but what I do with it is more important. I am in my forties, and I am big enough to live with the risk, so I accept it. My father is 83 and unsure of himself. My eldest daughter is eight and flighty. Is it appropriate to bear the risk for them? Should they be pouring boiling water? Decide whether you are prepared to live with a risk.
- If you are, be explicit about it.
- If you aren’t, work out how you will reduce it.
Either approach is acceptable; however, not understanding the risks is not.
An adventure is just poor planning
Roald Amundsen
6. What Stops It Going Wrong?
If you decide that you aren’t prepared to live with a risk, do something about it. Add a control to stop the wrong thing from happening.
The best controls are those that you don’t see. Making a cup of tea 100 years ago was far more hazardous than now. Process controls have been put in place that make it safer, and you don’t even notice.
- One hundred years ago, the milk could have gone off; today, nearly all milk is pasteurised.
- One hundred years ago, you could have added too much or too little tea; today, we use teabags.
- One hundred years ago, electricity could have burnt down your house; today, we have insulated wires.
We also have fridges, sugar lumps, clean running water, kettles that switch off, and three-pin plugs that only fit in the socket one way. All of these are process controls, they prevent bad things from happening, and we don’t even think about them.
Homework
Please take one of your processes and look at it critically. Systematically work through the six questions and ask yourself how good you are. The templates you choose to use are dependent on the service you offer and your organisation, but here are some examples and links you can use as a starting point:
1. Service Specifications:
2. Consistent Delivery:
3. Accountability:
4. Measurement:
5. Risk Analysis:
6. Controls:
This is a lot of homework. It begs the question, why would you bother? As a starting point, try working out the cost of poor quality. Maybe the pound notes will make grab your attention.
How did I do? Interesting and Important?
In next week’s lesson, we will discuss Employee Engagement
Thank you for reading
Related posts:
- Business process management – it will never work: The arguments against business process management.
- Boring but deadly: The case for clarity of roles and responsibilities.
- Accountability, not all it is cracked up to be: Is clear accountability always a good thing?
Around the web:
- Six Simple Rules:
- The E-Myth Revisited:
Michael Gerber explains the value of process management to small businesses. Take the assessment and see how you do.
Michael Gerber explains the value of process management to small businesses. Take the assessment and see how you do.Further reading:
Boston consulting group partners Tollman and Morieux explain how you can add too much process and control. They advise on fostering cooperation without forcing rules down people’s throats.
Post Script
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