I was reading through the past posts in this blog and came across this one from November 2008. It relates to a post from Amber Naslund on her Brass Tack Thinking blog.The post discuss a number of 'take-aways' that came from a discussion with Ford's Social Media guru Scott Monty.
I would recommend a read of the discussion because it highlights five things which apply to social media but apply equally well to business process work. Since the original blog was posted there has been a much wider linkage between social media and BPM which makes the post even more relevant.
The five take aways are:
Strategy First.
The tools don’t matter a fig. They’ll change, ebb, flow, and go away. Yes, you probably need some sort of tool to help you manage your process definition and evolution, and yes, Visio may well be what you end up using (although you know my thoughts on "Visio - the Devil's tool"), but at the end of the day it is the strategy for your process initiatives that is more important than the tools you use.
Individual faces matter.
It's worth remembering with business process management (and with pretty much any sort of human facing change) that adoption of the change is a human process. Faces matter in this case. You need to put a face at the head of the effort.
Business Process requires commitment.
A good business process programme will touch many areas of the business. As such it will require good management buy-in. The benefit of getting the management buy-in is that you can then start to focus on commitment from other parts of the business. It is much easier to push things forward with the right commitment at the top.
Keep your feet on the ground.
It’s very easy to get swept up in the idea that everyone and every business ought to be using the latest and greatest shiny new tools. This is even more apparent when you come to something like business process management. This tends to work on a 'hype-cycle' basis where people tend to get caught up in the fever of what can happen and then expect it to deliver more than it will. The ability to keep one's feet on the ground and link your efforts to a reality rather than a dream are paramount to making things like this work effectively.
Measure based on your goals.
It all comes down to the simple question of "Why are we doing this and can we prove that it is adding value?". If you can't measure whether you are being successful in what you are doing, you can't measure whether this is something that needs to be continued. Nobody wants to be in a situation where you are actually removing value from a value chain, or adding overhead unnecessarily.
How often do you use these take aways when working in your own organisations?
More importantly how much more relevant are these take aways with the growth of Social BPM?
Reminder: 'The Perfect Process Project Second Edition' is now available. Don't miss the chance to get this valuable insight into how to make business processes work for you. Click this link and follow the instructions to get this book.
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