In the last article I talked about the importance of managing the processes and projects. I want to elaborate a little on this. An old leadership saying is that “what you cannot see and measure – you cannot control”, meaning that you have no control over the things that you do not see how the look like, and further on do not measure.
The first thing is then to make sure that you see your business for what it is; a business follow of processes and projects, with a lot of people playing different roles in order to deliver a value to your customers. The less you and the team share view of the layout of the processes and projects, the less you have control.
It is easy to understand that if everyone was located in the same room and you wore playing the role of process manager, then you would have a better opportunity to succeed, than if everyone is sitting in different locations through out the world.
If you imagine having the process well designed and everyone knows about it, and you are in the same room as you team. Say that they are about 10 of them. You could place yourself in the middle of the room and then keep control of everything going on. You could have them raise kanban cards at their desks signaling different status to you, and to the rest of the team. You could also call them by name and get information about what is going on. They could as easy answer you back. As you have full understanding of the process and also about the progress, it is safe to say that you have control of the situation.
Now let us make the team, say five times, larger and have the sitting in different locations around the state or country. Or maybe even different continents in different times zones. Now it is not as easy to control everything, even though you have a well-defined process. Without a well-defined process, you are unfortunately totally lost. In order to get control for your well-defined process you need to use technology in the form of computer systems. But not any ERP system will do, unfortunately. You need to set up an environment of Business Process Management (BPM). BPM is an idea, a philosophy, of how to control you business, which comes with its own computer system package. The core of the package is the Process Engine. The Process Engine controls the process flow, and has control of everything that you and the team has set up as important to follow.
To you and your business excellence.
Matts
