Creating a Process-Centered Organization

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Organizations constantly strive to lower costs, increase productivity, improve flexibility, shrink cycle times and enhance the quality of service. None of these is possible, however, unless technology, people and processes are aligned toward the desired goals. Installing the latest technological advances brings only a marginal increase in volume. Training personnel in motivational and managerial techniques results in some minor improvement in the handling of tasks. Either of these benefits in isolation, however, will not help the organization realize its goals if the processes are not streamlined.

Tasks to Processes: A Paradigm Shift

Both the structure and culture of the industrial era were based on a disregard for processes. Instead, the concept of specialization of labor supported the task-oriented focus of the age. Adam Smith's followers argued that more complex processes should be fragmented into simple tasks, and efficiency could be achieved by focusing on these tasks. They argued that processes demanded intelligent and decisive supervisory control, and that simple workmen were incapable of this kind of work. Because process centering crossed organizational boundaries, which threatened the protected domains of functional task managers, it was suspect. The growing inefficiency of the task-oriented approach was its own undoing. Process centering emerged as the alternative to task centering. The transition from the traditional corporation to a process-centered corporation was a hard and unwelcome choice for most businesses, but it was necessary. A paradigm shift had occurred, or, as Michel Hammer put it in Beyond Reengineering :

Process centering is first and foremost a shift of perspective, an Escherian reversal of foreground and background, in which primary (tasks) and secondary (processes) exchange places.

What is a Process-Centered Organization?

A process means the operational dynamics associated with activity performed to achieve a particular result or objective. Process management is an ensemble of such activities and includes planning, monitoring and evaluating the performance of processes. Creating a process-centered organization involves the application of knowledge, skills, tools, techniques and systems to define, visualize, measure, control, report and improve processes, and direct the results of such efforts toward creating value for the customer or end user.

Creating a Process-Centered Organization

The primary focus of process centering is on creating value for the customer. By its nature, this is a shift of thinking, viewing the organization from outside in, unlike a task-centered view, which is inside out. All knowledge, skills, tools, techniques and systems are directed toward defining, measuring, controlling, visualizing, reporting and improving processes, so that the customer obtains the value from the product or service offered by that organization.

For example, a courier company promises to deliver mail to its destination in 24 hours at a given cost, The customer therefore expects that delivery will occur within the promised time frame. Any deviation from the declared norm is a sign of inefficiency, and the customer does not receive the promised value. If this happens, the organization must review the process design and determine any bottlenecks that might have delayed the delivery of mail. Each section or division handling the mail must realize that they are part of a larger process that must culminate in the on-time delivery of mail. The process design must ensure that each subprocess is properly subsumed and linked with the overall process of timely mail delivery. The organization must select the best methodologies for receiving, forwarding and delivering orders. The best mix of human skills and necessary equipment is required to deliver the mail from the source to the destination. All processes put in place must also be consistent with the organization's capacity to harness the required resources at the desired volumes and costs.

In other words, the organization must keep in mind the goal-creation of value to the customer-and organize its processes to achieve that goal.

Processes are not newly created by organizations, but existing processes should be streamlined to meet the organization's goals. What process centering does is to alter the perception and bring the process into focus. Process centering places the tasks into the appropriate slots and directs attention to the smooth transformation of the output of one task into the input of another. When this occurs, task-centered personnel begin to regard themselves as part of a larger process. The tasks that they perform are subsumed into the overall goal of the process. Performance then becomes optimized to meet that goal.

Shifting from a task-centric to a process-centric view requires that several process decisions are made by the organization. These choices include

• Identification of process goals and related processes and subprocesses
• Identification of the process types in the context of volume and delivery schedules
• Studying the interrelationships of different subprocesses within the overall process
• Measuring the efficiency of the process or subprocess in the context of the process goals
• Identifying the misalignments that require alignment or reengineering. These misalignments include decisions on the degree of vertical integration, resource flexibility and capital intensity for achieving the desired goals
• Getting the buy-in and commitment of all personnel involved in the different subprocesses and training them to adapt to the new perspective
• Designing the new process, keeping in view the goal-namely, creating value for the customer
• Measuring, mapping and defining the new process in the context of the goal and fine tuning it repeatedly to achieve the desired results

Summary

Process centering involves reconceptualization of organizational perceptions up, down and across the production and distribution chain. Identified processes can be complex and challenging to manage, because they cut across organizational lines and boundaries. This kind of thinking requires skill-sets and resources hitherto unavailable to the organization. Process centering can change the way workflow is defined in the organization and the way people perceive their roles in the activity chain. Executed well, process centering makes sure that both the trees and the forest are not lost from view, no matter which way the organization looks.