Each year, along with my colleagues at Leonardo Consulting, I produce ProcessDays. ProcessDays 2009 is a process festival of nine Master Classes and a two-day conference. It takes about 18 months to design and deliver ProcessDays and about this time last year we were concerned that a difficult economic environment in 2009 would make it difficult to have a successful event. Little did we imagine just how deeply troubled the economy would be. But in any case we ate own dog food and looked at the processes of design and delivery, we looked at where the value was, we looked at where the costs were, we looked at where the frustrations came from. The changes we made, many not obvious from outside, were profound and far reaching. And very successful.

In 2009 we will have more delegates, more sponsors, a larger program and we’ll deliver much enhanced value to all who invest their time and money in ProcessDays. I like the idea that the largest and most successful BPM education and networking event in Australasia will be hugely successful in the face of economic turmoil because we took a process-centric approach.

What would a process-centric organisation be doing in these tough times? With all of  the many pressures on organisations when markets are shrivelling, funding sources are drying up, when new projects are cancelled, old projects are put on hold, hiring freezes are imposed, budgets are cut and people are stressed, what would a fully mature process-managed organisation be doing? Will this recession show the power of process?

No research data behind the thoughts below. These are just my speculations about life at Level 5 of the BPM Maturity scale in the teeth of a severe economic crisis. To make it easier  to discuss let’s call our fictive organisation Acme5. This could be a public or private organisation of any size.

Acme5 should be in a better place to start withn than other organisations. As it enters the economic crisis Acme5 has years of process-centric operation behind it since it didn’t get to such a high level of BPM maturity overnight. This should mean that Acme5 is more financially stable, has less waste and is a more sustainable operation.

Of course it’s not magic. There are no Harry Potter effects. Any organisation with a product or service that customers no longer want is going to be trouble no matter how elegantly they have managed to date. However, Acme5 will have a very good understanding of its own ecosystem. It will understand it’s key processes in considerable detail. This understanding will mean that it can change those processes with more certainty and less risk. It will know where to cut costs effectively and safely. It will know what (and who) are the more important assets and resources.

Where Acme5 does have spare resouces it will be better placed to know where they can be best used in the short and long term. Let’s not confuse process-centricity with altruism though. Just because an organisation has a high level of BPM maturity doesn’t mean it will retain staff as an act of social responsibility. We might think it should, but that’s a separate thing. BPM Level 5 is not a precursor to beatification.

Acme 5 has a very good understanding of its customers and other stakeholders and the value it delivers to each of them. This clarity of purpose will be invaluable as Acme5 reviews its operation in the new conditions. Has the customer/stakeholder value proposition changed? How does Acme5 change to follow that?

The enhanced performance measurement capabilities that came with high BPM maturity may even have given Acme 5 forwarning about the financial tsunami. At the very least it now provides valuable data about what is really happening across the value chains. Better measurement means better management, especially through a crisis.

The staff at Acme5 will be empowered and enabled to find new solutions to new problems. This will be part of the culture. New problems will cause a reflex action of looking for process improvements. They’ll still be worried about the future, but the staff at Acme5 will also be well engaged in making it more secure.

In summary, Acme5 would be doing better and differently to other organisations without the same level of BPM maturity. Acme5 will better understand it’s customers, suppliers and itself. This understanding will be quite profound, objective and factual. Greater understanding delivers better decision making. More detailed understanding will allow it to be more precise in any cuts it needs to make. It will already have a well-developed habit of continuous improvement and waste reduction and this will be even more important as the environment changes.

“Knowledge is power” the saying goes. With its high level of process awareness Acme5 has extensive knowledge, not just about itself, but also about its suppliers and customers. Detailed knowledge across the complete supply chain coupled with detailed knowledge inside its own value chains will empower Acme5.

Given a choice would you bet your future on Acme5 or its more common, and less able, fellow traveller, Acme2.5?

In 2006 I wrote this paper with Andrew Spanyi. I recently had occasion to re-read it and Ithink the messages have held up well. It was fun to write and, although a little whimsical in parts, has a strong message. The “BPM Credo” provides plenty of food for thought.

In these times of a deeply troubled economy, many organisations are sensing that the “sack and sell” approach to survival is a very limited response.

In the business of BPM we are often trying to change minds to the process view. This can be difficult; sometimes impossible. One approach that you might consider is to model the mindsets. What are the key players really thinking? What is their current management approach? Which of the process messages are they most likely to find attractive? What mindsets do they need to have individually and collectively to achieve high(er) levels of BPM maturity? What do we need to do to close the gap from current to target mindset?

Does this cycle sound familiar? We need to develop the As Is / 2B / 2Do cycle but this time applied to mindsets rather than business processes. We need particular plans for groups and individuals. I recently heard of an organisation where the process analyst group kept an organisation chart model that was colour coded to show the “forces of good and evil”. We need to understand, in as much detail as we can gather, the current and future states of the particular group and individual mindsets that we seek to change. If we don’t have such a focused plan then we are just hoping that all will be well. This is the well known ATAMO technique which is foolproof if you can get it right, but very hard to do!

I’m just back from a week in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. In the week before that I ran the BPTrends Professional Certificate courses in Bahrain. I have been to both places several times before and it’s always fascinating to be in such a different world. The constant background for the two weeks was the coverage of the fighting in Gaza provided (for me in English) by CNN and the BBC. Some interesting discussions on that topic but I’ll leave those for another time and place.

On the BPM front I had three meetings that were inspiring. One with a financial services company, one with a electronics services company and another with a Government Department. In each case people are keen to explore, and invest in, the development of a process-centric view of their organisation. All are successful organisations with big plans for the future.

The financial services group operates under the rules of Islamic Banking and is therefore removed from the direct impact of the greed driven problems from which the alleged banking experts have suffered. They want to understand how to re-create a process model of sound banking practice.

The electronics company is dealing with exceptional growth and can see that it needs to overhaul it’s operations at both the enterprise and process levels to survive it’s success.

The Government Department wants to increase the process improvement capabilities of several hundred people in line with the overall commitment to deliver e-Government services.

In the space of two days in Riyadh I had more serious and positive discussions with senior managers about real process-based management than I had had in 2 months in Australia.

Was I just lucky or might it be that there is a growing trend for seriously successful organisations around the world to think and act seriously about the process view?

Looking for a way to get some action happening in process improvement? A quite blunt question I have asked to effect is “Do you really believe that everything you do is as efficient as it can be?” The answer to that has to be “No, of course not”. Now we are agreed that there is stuff that could work better (avoid the “p” word if you need to) and the questions are simply what it would cost to have a look (answer: not much) and what the payback for the changes might be (if it’s too long, don’t do it).

In these times of the GFC (and at any other time for that matter) there are many opportunities to improve performance and save money.