If the past five years have proven anything, it is the need for organisations to evolve and transform or die. Regardless of whether the organisation is governmental, large corporation, small business, sole trader, regulator, or anything in between, the need to transform service and value delivery to meet changing expectations now appears to be the pre-eminent strategic challenge ..read more

Regardless of the industry, sector or market, every regulatory sector contains a wide range of participants, each with different motivations and drivers that influence their intent, behaviour, preferences, reactions, and willingness to comply with rules and policies. For regulators of these industries and markets, maintaining a balance between the interests of the industry, and the interests of the consumer has always been a perpetual challenge. Arguably, the bigger challenge for regulators has been an inability to adapt their strategy and approach to address differences in human behaviour an ..read more

All businesses have processes, from payroll to patient admissions. Often, the larger the organisation, the more unwieldy its processes can become ..read more

What's it all about? If you google "what's it all about" you get 4.5 billion results. Seems that we are keen to answer that question. Of course, it would be much more useful if there were just one answer. I have a similar experience when I ask people what they understand by "business process management" and related phrases. [2.5 billion, in case you were wondering.] It would be of significant benefit if there were just one answer here also. Good news! There is just one answer. The bad news is we all agree with that but have a different version. The great news is that we can sol ..read more

  Processes deliver Every organization makes promises to customers and other stakeholders. Such promises are its reason for existence and are shaped as value propositions in the organizational strategy. Traditional management follows the organization chart with most management activity directed up and down that chart. But how do we get work done? How do we deliver on those promises? We work in collaboration across the organization, not up and down. Is there any box on that chart that can, by itself, deliver products or services externally? No there is not, that’s not the way it ..read more

The simple existence of a problem is not enough reason to invest in fixing it, perhaps not now, perhaps not ever. Organizations need a systemic approach to define what good looks like, assess current performance, and make evidence-based decisions about which performance gaps to close. The Tregear Circles replace random acts of management with a metamodel for continuous process improvement. I have recently encountered several examples of the idea that higher process performance target scores are obviously better than lower ones, just because they are … well … higher; that setting a ..read more

The development of organizational management theory should seek to make operational management simpler, not more complex. Is it possible that the primary goal of organizational performance improvement gets lost in the ever-increasing list of shiny objects such as transformation, digitalization, robotization, valuation, acceleration, innovation, automation, and disruption? Are the -ion ideas a distraction or a boon for good management? "Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." Antoine de Saint-Exupéry [1 ..read more

In the fair dinkum department, the most important question about BPM must be "is it worth the effort?" It works in theory, but does it work in practice? What is the return on process? How should we measure, and report, the outcomes of process-based management?   The Wrong Answer Let's deal with the wrong answer first. It's not about the artifacts. No organization has a business problem called "we don't have enough process models." It is not a business improvement outcome to say we've trained 50 people on Six Sigma analysis, or appointed some process owners, or modelled a process ..read more

As some readers will know from my previous writing, for example here, there, and everywhere, I take a broad view of BPM, seeing it as a management philosophy, preferring the term process-based management over business process management. A brief summary of that view is as follows. An organization's resources are managed 'vertically' via the organization chart. Value is created, accumulated, and delivered 'horizontally' across that chart, i.e., via cross-functional processes. Value is accumulated across, not up and down, the functional organization as the various parts collaborate t ..read more

For nearly two decades I have worked with many organizations in different countries, cultures, and corporate structures to understand and advance the theory and practice of process-based management. There is a common problem, a change of mindset and practice that many organizations fail to make. Process improvement alone is not enough. Successful process-based management also requires … management ..read more