“It was the best of processes; it was the worst of processes…”  

Charles Dickenson’s A Tale of Two Cities describes the economic disconnect between the lavish lifestyles of the French Monarchy and the marginalized citizens of France.  

This same drama plays out in organizations where regional departments insist on maintaining their own processes in order to accommodate their “regional differences.” These departments may not understand how their “superstar” performance may actually be causing underperformance in another department, or even the company as a whole. 

So what’s the cause of this process disparity? Well, the root cause is often “a tale of two processes.”

 From the perspective of the regional department, their unique processes allow them to produce at a high rate of efficiency.  They may not understand why the corporate office wants them to tweak their excellent processes.  Let them eat cake!

From the perspective of the downstream department, their daily work is chaotic due to the high level of process variation.  As a result of this variability the customer processes lose output efficiency – thereby becoming rate limiters to the downstream processes.  The consequences are unfortunate for the customer department as they become marginalized in the company. Cursed bourgeois regional departments!

Just as in the French Monarchy, executives in the company may understand that there are issues, but do not understand the root cause of the problem, scope of the issue or even the solution of how to fix it. 

Yes, the French peasants did eventually revolt against the governing class and threw the country into chaos, but I am not suggesting that you to go out and storm the executive floor of the office with torches and pitchforks (that may not go over well)!  

Instead, you should utilize the discipline of Business Process Analysis to help the entire organization see the “big picture,” to see how their actions are effecting the organization as a whole, and to understand that this “tale of two processes” needs to be remedied with a process revolution.   

Leading a process revolution must be conducted with participation of all key stakeholders, either as active participants or decision makers – just like we’ve learned in revolutions, success comes from accord.

The first step is developing the current state models with all the key stakeholders.  This model serves two purposes: first, it’s a basis for future state analysis; and second, it’s an eye-opening form of “group therapy” that allows all of the departments to understand how their processes impact other departments and the company as a whole.  The current state meetings sometimes start with short tempers and accusations, but will quickly turn to understanding and “hugs” as true complexity and  processes inefficiencies are exposed. 

Next, future state process models are developed with the same stakeholders who should now be refocused on improving the organization (the best revolutions work when you plan your post-revolution environment ahead of time!).  The future state models should drill down deep enough to expose the roles and responsibilities, deliverables, triggering events and decisions.  Through this exercise, a careful examination of regional / functional processes should be conducted, and a “best practices” approach that can be used by all departments should be explored.

And just like is typical to most revolutions, the improvement phase can have its own issues as vested interests in controlling new departments, roles and retaining power can muddy up the waters of forming a new process. This is where Business Process Management can come in handy, because the organization will have a way to enforce the changes, and keep the process revolution moving forward!

So my fellow revolutionaries, good luck, and Viva le Process!

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Tom Holmberg is the Senior Business Process Analyst at a pharmaceutical company. Tom is responsible for all aspects of Business Process Analysis within Research and Development. His current focus is integrating Enterprise Architecture with the Business Process Architecture. He has 11 years experience in process optimization with specialty in aligning talent / technology / business process. Tom has worked in the Pharmaceutical, Medical Device and Supply Chain Industries.

Tom holds a B.A. Psychology with an emphasis in Industrial / Organizational Effectiveness; Masters of Business Administration from University of Phoenix and a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt Certification from the University of California, Irvine.

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