Oriel, a SAM Group Company, hosted a Process Management Webinar on March 5, 2008. Guest speakers were Rohit Ramaswamy, Oriel’s Vice President of Strategy and Client Relationships and Brian McKibben, Senior Consultant and author of The Sam Group’s Process Managment materials. Listed below are some basic background questions regarding process managment as well as the participant questions and answers from the session.
You can also listen to the audio (WAV file, 25 MB).
Background Questions
How is that different from the Six Sigma leadership steps?
The Six Sigma leadership steps happen at discrete points in time, usually related to specific improvement events. The Process Management infrastructure is a closed-loop, continuous process that can’t be accidentally discontinued if temporarily side-lined by short-term business priorities.
What is involved in establishing a Process Management infrastructure?
The top management team leads three steps: 1) Identify the PM elements already existing in the business. 2) Identify the PM elements that are weak or missing. 3) Fix or develop the PM elements identified in 2.
Who would be involved in implementing PM in an organization?
The top management team and the owners of the core (value-added) business processes. With help from several PM staff members.
What obstacles might have to be overcome to successfully implement PM?
1) Lack of strategic business goals for accomplishment of specific competitive differentiators. 2) Lack of a Process Management wheel, components and implementation roadmap. 3) Lack of leadership commitment and involvement. 4) Lack of PM coaching assistance. 5) Misaligned enabling processes (support systems) that cause the organization to under-perform on critical PM functions.
Participant Questions
How do you tie in the alignment with a strategic planning process (such as Hoshin)? Does this get real projects that are worthwhile to the business out on the table and deployed to teams who can work them?
We think of alignment as the activities and behaviors that senior management need to incorporate in order to guide the process improvement effort. Hoshin planning could be one of the tools that management uses to prioritize and deploy real projects, but it may not be the only one. For example, management can decide that it is going to delegate project selection to the operating units, and only be involved in assessing whether these projects support the business and are providing adequate ROI. We do not restrict ourselves in the model to a particular approach. The purpose of the model is to identify and use the best approach for the current circumstances for the organization.
This sounds a lot like Deming’s “path of frustration.” Has that been investigated? Short term or “special cause” firefighting activities have short term results. I would think that would be one of the most consistent issues. True?
Yes – this is exactly true. The Process Management model is intended to help companies build the profound knowledge Deming talks about that really helps organizations build a culture of continual improvement after the obvious opportunities have dried up.
This is starting to sound like “management by results” which has been profoundly rejected by such authors as Brian Joiner. The key is to not look too closely at the results, but to look more closely at what drives results. The point made by Brian about metrics is a key ingredient here. Is that what you are doing?
It is not about management by results, but about process management for the “right” results. By the time “results” happen, it is too late to act. So finding up-stream metrics that monitor what drives results is very important. Other than measuring “cost savings,” most organizations do not measure the effectiveness of their improvement initiatives and improvement practices. PM is about assessing and measuring the effectiveness of the organization’s improvement actions to make sure that what is being done improves the bottom line, has a positive impact on customers, and does a better job of engaging employees.
In a service organization, what elements in Process Management might be unique, and therefore influence which tools are selected and how they are employed?
Service organizations are different from manufacturing companies, but the core concepts of Lean and Six Sigma apply in both worlds. Likewise, there are no Process Management elements that are unique to service organizations. EVERY organization that seeks to be successful at process improvement needs to address ALL elements of the Process Management model. However, the tools (Lean, Six Sigma, SCM, ISO, etc.) that are selected for use within the PM model will depend on what the gaps are and a collaborative dialog on the best way to address the gaps. The way the elements get discussed and the examples used in a service environment should differ from a manufacturing environment. In PM, consistent performance of the PM steps is paramount to decisions on which tools to use within the steps.
How would you counsel an organization to address the inertia that exists in company after several unsuccessful attempts to implement a Continuous Improvement process?
This is a very good question. Over the last twenty years, 70% of leadership teams have stated the results of their improvement initiatives failed to meet their expectations. The approach that we have followed is to identify the “missing ingredients” that cause this frustration. We have then done work to shore up the missing pieces without labeling it as a “continuous improvement” effort. Once more of the infrastructure is in place, and it is possible to demonstrate with obvious visible results that the “missing ingredients” have been addressed, it is then more likely that the organization will engage better in the next attempt. Actions speak louder than words, and in time, the people seeing them begin to accept that things really are different; that they can be empowered to make positive changes.
The Process Management wheel represents a continuous effort, as I understand it, it is “never ending”?
Yes it does – that is the idea of “continuous” improvement
Do you have examples or recommendations for how to measure/capture ROI?
The ROI institute (see website below) provides many tools for measuring ROI. http://www.roiinstitute.net/. We offer support on measuring ROI for process improvement efforts through one of our partner companies.
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