Many Process Analysts see themselves as “Process Engineers,” and they take the designation quite literally.  They like to staff the project with like-minded people, not those pesky line workers who say, “But that’s not how we do it.”  Shortly after project kick-off, the Analysts dive into as much process detail as possible, as rapidly as possible.  They generate thick notebooks of swimlane diagrams, waving them around as if they were Holy Writ. These Engineers preside over process work sessions which are jaw-droppingly boring, mistaking the nodding heads of dozing participants for some kind of agreement on issues.  They are invariably shocked and dismayed to find that their final output -say, a Requirements Definition document – is panned by project team and sponsor alike.

So, what are they doing wrong?

Frequently, they are not attending to the “People Stuff”.  Now, a thorough discussion of the People Stuff would take a good deal of time, and should really be the subject of its own training course.  I will just touch on a few key pieces of advice here:

1. Start working on the People Stuff during your very first discussion with the Project Sponsor.  That person has an agenda of his/her own (no, really!), you need to determine what it is, and whether it will be a barrier to success.  One of my best projects, years ago, was one that never even got started.  I determined in my initial meeting with the Sponsor that he was demanding a lot of time and money for automation which would be of minimal benefit to the organization.  I made the case for tabling the project (and I had to make the case multiple times, because he was politically influential).  I count it one of my great successes, because I actively promoted the good of the company over the pet project of one person.
2. Determine the stakeholders – ALL of them.  Any stakeholder whom you ignore will show up at the worst possible time in your project, count on it. And, a stakeholder who has been ignored can be a powerful antagonist to the success of the initiative.  A good way to identify the stakeholder is to use the ProVision Business Interaction Model. This modeler helps you to push your team through the task of identifying touch points and it provides a really useful visual for your scope-setting conference with the Sponsor.
3. Ask every stakeholder: “What does success look like to you?” Ask them to pretend that the new process has been implemented successfully, and has been operating perfectly for six months: “What are you seeing? What are the things you love about this new process?” These discussions will surface some objectives which no one has talked about yet.  If undiscovered, these desires would have been voiced only at the time of project ”go-live,” when it would be too late to address them. 
4. Push both the Sponsor and management to get some workers of all levels on the project team.  You really need the day-to-day experience of all levels in order to get clarity on what the process SHOULD do for them.  Managers will tend to define the process according to the documented policy, line workers will tell you how often they have to violate that policy just to meet the goals set by management. Your job is to surface the real process; identify the broken parts, and help your clients to design a better way of doing things. Bleasdale’s Third Axiom of Process Management:  Honor the REAL process. If it’s broken, fix it; but don’t pretend it’s working when it’s not.
5. Plan to do a lot of crowd control in your work sessions.  There is no free lunch for the Process Analyst:  you must prepare for the work session with forethought; spend a lot of time developing visuals which will elicit maximum understanding and engagement, generate a good agenda, and keep to it. Provide descriptive meeting notes and lists of “takeaways” for the team to work on for the next session.  Without these tools, your meeting will degenerate into a “venting session.”  All this preparation is very difficult, very time-consuming – and a big part of the “magic” which makes a project successful.  Incidentally, I strongly advise tag-teaming the work sessions, with at least two people working on facilitation and scribing.  It is virtually impossible for one person to facilitate AND take notes.  When the facilitator stops to document issues or questions, that lull in the action sucks all the energy out of the session.
6. Find out what individual team members like, and provide it.  If possible, get a small budget for refreshments. Keep in mind that the people staffing these projects are doing ‘extra’ work. Yes, they really have full-time jobs; and they must add these meetings, and your wearisome take-away assignments, to their already-crammed workload. This causes them to feel a bit entitled to a treat, now and then; and it is only fair for you to provide it.  If money is tight at my company, I pay for candy myself (customer service is my thing.). My clients are very appreciative of the fact that I care enough to learn their preferences, and the sugar keeps the energy level up for those long afternoon work sessions.
7. Perhaps the most important advice on the people stuff—Plan to work harder than the rest of the team. If you are running the process analysis portion of a project (or the whole initiative), you are the one who sets the tone for diligence, precision, and thoroughness. Your audience will care only as much as you do. So, you must be willing to set the standard for others to follow. And, from a pragmatic standpoint, you will not be able to hold other team members accountable unless you have demonstrated that you have gone above and beyond. 

 In trying to think of a way to synthesize it all, I remembered a conversation with a potential client a few years ago.  He wanted me to work with a group comprised of IT and Marketing folks, very cantankerous and opinionated.  He was concerned about the “volatility factor” on the team, and wanted reassurance that I could manage the personalities. He asked me, “Would you mind telling me your management style?”  I hadn’t had THAT discussion in years, and the question took me by surprise.  So I answered from the gut, but tentatively, “…I guess you’d call it:  “Mother Hen…” 

 Even as the words slipped out, I thought, “Oh, brother, this is a deal-killer for sure.”  But before I had even finished the thought, he blurted, “That’s eXACTly what we need!!!!”   

 That was an “Aha!” moment for me, as I came face-to-face with my own philosophy about The People Stuff, something I had never articulated before.  And, if you think about it, it’s really not a bad paradigm.  The mother hen clearly cares about her wayward charges, but she’s not going to be a pushover.  She constantly watches their progress, intervening when necessary to keep order.  She bothers them, and bothers them some more, until she achieves the desired result. She doesn’t harm them, but she doesn’t let them deviate from the chosen path either.

So, if you are your project’s Mother Hen, look at it this way: You may bruise ‘em a little bit – but you’ll keep ‘em all alive; you’ll all get where you are going; and you won’t inflict any lasting damage.  Not bad, as management styles go.

===========================

Pat Bleasdale is an AVP with Wilmington Trust, a financial services company in Delaware.  She is a veteran Business Process and IT professional, with extensive experience in management consulting.  She has been actively involved in process analysis and business transformation since the 1990s.  Her background spans multiple industries, in sectors as diverse as Financial Services and Manufacturing; and her clients have included Fortune 100 firms, as well as small and mid-sized companies.  In 2006, Pat joined Wilmington Trust as the Company’s Business Process Specialist, charged with developing and deploying a BPM framework, a process engineering methodology, and best practices throughout the organization. 

 Pat holds B.S., M.A., and PhD degrees.  In the 1980s, she coined what has become Bleasdale’s First Axiom of Process Management:  ‘Never automate a mess.’

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The lives of many organizations have similar, humble beginnings.

But in order to survive and thrive in their environments both the caterpillar and the business have to grow – and for both parties, growing is essentially an input, output scenario.

For the business to grow, it needs to collect resources – people, materials, technology, infrastructure, etc. in order to produce its deliverables or provide its services, which will ultimately enable it to generate profits and expand.

The caterpillar on the other hand, needs to consume food to provide its body with energy - this enables the caterpillar to utilize food resources to increase its size.

Undoubtedly both the caterpillar and the business need resources to grow. But just like the caterpillar in a much beloved and well known children’s book, a business can become fat as it consumes more resources than necessary – or even the wrong resources altogether. Imagine your organization eating through 5 million sheets of paper, 40 thousand dollars in fines from a compliance violation, 150 hours of employee productivity because of duplication of effort, and so on.

Luckily for the caterpillar, it instinctively builds a cocoon that transforms it into a beautiful butterfly – eliminating its excess bulk, and allowing it to soar to new levels of prosperity.

But what’s a business to do? For businesses, overconsumption and poor management is a major problem that can lead to significant losses. Being too fat can be fatal to an enterprise – causing it to waste the profits that it needs to survive and thrive, and to become so sluggish that it is unable to effectively compete in the marketplace.

Unfortunately, no organization can wrap itself up in a cocoon and triumphantly emerge months later as a new and improved version of its former self. But if it were possible, I think it’s a safe bet that many would retract for a brief period and allow such a change to happen.

But there are technologies that can act like a cocoon to facilitate business transformation – and, even better than a cocoon, these technologies enable organizations to realize real, measurable improvements without ever requiring them to pull away from the marketplace. This means organizations can serve their customers and drive results while transforming to be Leaner, more agile and competitive than ever before.

For example, with Metastorm Enterprise, Metastorm’s integrated software suite of Business Process Management (BPM), Business Process Analysis (BPA) and Enterprise Architecture (EA), organizations can achieve business transformation in 3 easy steps:

Step 1: SEE the breadth of the enterprise including goals, resources and key process relationships with Metastorm ProVision®.

Step 2: THINK through and analyze possible organizational changes and process improvements with Metastorm ProVision for BPA – ensuring that the right changes are made.

Step 3: DO the right things with Metastorm BPM® – and quickly and cost effectively realize desired changes and results.

With Metastorm’s “See. Think. Do” capabilities, organizations can identify time and resource wasters, test and implement improvements, and then execute new processes to metamorphose from fat and sluggish to harmonious, well-balanced and resource efficient – enabling them to soar above the competition and achieve unprecedented levels of success.

With Metastorm Enterprise, business transformation truly is elementary – after all, it’s as easy as counting to 3!

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Of course this new, unwavering display of willpower and drive usually lasts until around March when gym attendance slowly trickles back to its normal, pre-resolution-season numbers. But there are always those dedicated few who come out on top – leaner, more agile and energized, and of course, healthier and more resilient than ever before.

A recent Financial Times post outlines ways that we can increase our chances of being successful with our fitness resolutions – one being to enlist a personal trainer. Another important element to a successful resolution season (and beyond!) is of course, to evaluate the way we treat our bodies – Are we drinking enough water? Are we wasting calories on poor food choices? Are we getting enough sleep, or spending too much time watching television?

This really comes down to one essential question— Are we allocating our time and resources to ensure that our bodies are running at optimal efficiency?

A few months ago I explained that businesses are just like the human body – living, growing and continually changing. So shouldn’t you pay attention to how you allocate your time and resources within your organization? Just like your body, your business can also get Lean to become more agile and productive, and healthier and more resilient than ever!

Set a fitness resolution for your business in the New Year, and let us be your personal trainer! You can fast track your efforts to get Lean in 2010 with help from Metastorm’s Enterprise Architecture and Business Process Management software. Using Metastorm as your platform for getting Lean will enable you to:

• Analyze your operations and infrastructure to identify underutilized resources,
• Run process scenarios to figure out how to accelerate cycle times and improve results,
• Identify where time is wasted and improve on those business processes,
• Automate processes to increase efficiency, save money, and become more agile – do more with less, and
• Give your employees a toolset that will make them more productive from Day One.

With Metastorm’s help your organization can lose the ‘fat,’ accelerate results and rev up the corporate metabolism!

Want to know more about your organization’s connection to the human body? Read this recent article by Laura Mooney, Vice President of Corporate Communications at Metastorm.

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The award recognizes organizations that have excelled in implementing innovative process improvement solutions to meet strategic business objectives.

AmerisourceBergen has certainly done exactly that—to date the organization has established a BPM Center of Excellence, deployed and optimized nearly 200 processes throughout the enterprise, and has approximately 3,000 users on the Metastorm software globally.

The AmerisourceBergen award entry highlights the company’s senior executive support for Metastorm BPM as an enterprise solution. It also outlines some of the key objectives that BPM software helps the company meet on an ongoing basis, including:

• maintaining high quality standards while managing growth,
• creating efficiencies,
• making better and faster decisions, and
• ensuring regulatory and legal compliance

“The pharmaceutical industry is extremely complex and competitive, and AmerisourceBergen has embraced the Metastorm BPM suite as an enabler to help effectively address market demands in a highly competitive environment,” stated Manoj Kumar, manager of Business Process Automation at AmerisourceBergen. “The results and return on investment have been significant.”

We congratulate AmerisourceBergen and Manoj Kumar, the company’s manager of Business Process Automation, for their dedication and hard work. Receiving this award is a great recognition of the broad scope and remarkable success of its BPM initiative.

To hear more comments from Manoj Kumar, listen to this audio clip

Watch the video below to learn more about how AmerisourceBergen leverages Metastorm BPM.

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Despite the speculation that SOA’s days are numbered, Joe McKendrick provides a brief IT history lesson that corroborates why it is now more important than ever for companies to proactively build better services that will recession-proof their business in the future.

If a business thrives on providing service, why cut back on IT investments that are intended to make these services more efficient for the company and convenient for their consumers?

McKendrick also discusses a recent Q&A post by Michael Poulin that explained how SOA can save businesses during the economic crisis. Though skeptics may think this is a bold statement, Poulin notes:

“By going slower and “tightening the belt,” the business cuts its core — serviceability and [Service Orientation] SO. This results in lower sustainability and higher risk of total crash even if the business freezes. Another reason could be the business continues doing the same things and in the same way but slower, in smaller volume, and with less reserves. When a business shrinks, it gradually loses ability to analyze market situation, new conditions, changed demand, and so on. That is, its low-level processes and operations get more and more out of sync with the changing external environment. This makes the organization even more fragile.

In contrast, if understood on time and properly applied to the organization, SO can guide the organizational structure that increases organization “survivalability” via flexibility. SO can provide its best results right when the market turmoil is quite high.”

Both Poulin and McKendrick paint an astute picture on SOA’s potential to rebuild and enhance business services.

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