Making Business Process Management Work

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By Dian Schaffhauser

I've just finished reading Business Process Management is a Team Sport, by Andrew Spanyi, who wrote one of the Intelligent Enterprise articles BPMEnterprise blogged about a couple of days ago. This one isn't his latest volume -- that would be More for Less: The Power of Process Management (which I haven't picked up yet).

If you're looking for a book to hand off to the business people in your organization to help them understand why you keep jumping up and down about BPM, this might be the volume. It's all of 170 pages with big print and can probably be read, as the author writes, on a plane going from Dallas to Boston.

More importantly, the style is unique. The typical volume on BPM follows the traditional framework approach, where each chapter explains a different aspect of BPM and how to implement it. Spanyi, on the other hand, explains the concepts and how to apply them in real life by telling the story of a group of mid-level managers who are attending a seminar on the topic. Bob is the CIO for a diversified chemical company, trying to communicate how BPM would be a smart investment to the business side of his firm. His friend Glen is the VP of network operations for a regional wireless provider; he wants to learn how BPM can be used to line up company resources with strategic direction. Lori is the sales director for a pharmaceutical company who wants to understand the steps for implementing BPM. And so on.

They've come to a hotel meeting room to attend a multi-day workshop given by Peter, a consultant who advises clients on issues BPM-related.

As each day progresses, Peter does his teaching, members of the group ask questions, and we're led through an understanding of how to develop "strategic clarity," build the plan, do the rollout and maintain the discipline of continual process improvement.

Why is this format so effective? Because as a reader, you don't notice just how dry the topic -- when parsed -- really is. After all, you're too busy getting caught up in the characters' corporate stories and complaints. Gosh, they're just like you and me -- trying to build a better world by doing right by our companies -- and nobody else around them seems to care!

Also, by using a multitude of people and personalities, Spanyi can address the very real skepticism and obstacles that surface during any kind of business transformation effort. For example, one common obstacle is a "reluctance to modify management reward systems to support business process performance... It's as if some leaders assume that they can go on rewarding the same old thing, and yet, expect different results."

Several themes emerge from Spanyi's book. (It actually covers eight principles for successful BPM, each described at a high level; but these are the ones that stuck for me.)

First, BPM needs to take an enterprise business view. Only in that way can you identify the major business processes that define a company, including their inputs, outputs, key sub-steps, measures of performance and interdependencies.

All of that needs to grow out of a customer-centric view of the company, which is Spanyi's second major point. Without a solid understanding of customer requirements, the company won't be able to get clarity on how well current processes are doing their jobs.

Third, the whole initiative -- and on-going sustainability -- requires executive sponsorship. Only then will proper communication company-wide take place; only then will compensation plans reflect a changing reality that promotes cross-divisional efforts.

Spanyi obviously uses the book as a handout in his own consulting gigs for Spanyi International. And that presents a problem. Through his proxy, Peter, he references a number of articles from Harvard Business Review and other resources that aren't included in the book. (If they were, the length would, no doubt, double.) He includes a link to his Web site, where you can order the various materials, but I didn't know that when I sat down with the book. And each reference to an article made me think, "Now, what am I missing by not having that at hand?"

Also, the style gets somewhat laughable at times. You'll learn, for example, that the restrooms for the hotel are down the hall to the left. But more importantly, the participants all come across as really brainy whenever they ask questions. (Where was the guy who always seems to sit in the workshops I attend who asks the truly inane questions that set our eyeballs rolling?) And their attention never flags. Nobody ever asks a question on a topic that was just explained.

Finally, a small complaint. The book includes no index. That's a shame, because it would be nice to be able to refer back quickly to some of the concepts covered.

Spanyi's an entertaining writer who has taken on the challenge of making even the business-speak-laden topic of business process engaging. If you face the chore of leading company leaders into the promised land of BPM, you could do far worse than invest in a carton of copies of Business Process Management Is a Team Sport.

Useful Links

Spanyi International
http://www.spanyi.com/

Business Process Management Is a Team Sport
http://www.bpmenterprise.com/V4f

More for Less: The Power of Process Management
http://www.bpmenterprise.com/cgv

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