It’s a mission critical asset for every enterprise, but we can’t own it. There’s seems to be an endless and reliable supply but we keep running out. It can’t be stockpiled and we can’t do anything without it. It’s not visible but we can see where it’s been. A vital natural resource, it is available to all in precisely equal amounts. It always arrives just-in-time and, short of wormholes and ultra high speed travel, can’t be slowed down or speeded up. An essential element in every process, it is the ultimate perishable. Time.

In my recent BPrends Practical Process column I suggested that we should be more interested in measuring the things that go wrong than those that go right. Jane challenged me on this:

” … I disagree with you that “We should be more interested in things that go wrong than in things that go right.”.  Yes, of course it’s important to capture and measure what goes wrong so that you can identify weaknesses and improve/resolve them – but unless you capture and measure what goes right, how on earth do you compare ‘wrong’ against ‘right’.  Or be able to reward, praise etc the team/people who got it right?”

Sure we need to know what is working well for all the reasons janestate. It’s also true that the stuff that is working well can be a benchmark or source of ideas for fixing the stuff that isn’t.  Continuous improvement though means continuously finding things that should be improved. My experience is that organisations who are not  actively seeking to uncover problems, don’t find them. Meetings/reviews where most of the time is spent listing all the successes can easily turn into a lovely time of self-congratulations. It’s also the easy thing to do. As always it’s about balance. I’d tip the balance in favour of continuous improvement and for that to happen you have to be continuously finding things to improve.

My BPTrends column Practical Process has been published.

The Process Ninja has been blogging about ProcessDays.

There is a finite amount of management attention. If we want managers to start paying more attention to BPM, what should they let go? Is it a zero sum game?

At a training course I delivered yesterday there was some interesting discussion about what “improvement” means when we talk of “process improvement”. Too often it is equated with cost reduction and this is a very shallow view of process performance. Of course, cost is important but it’s not the only thing. Processes deliver value to customers and other stakeholders. Who are the customers and stakeholders? What value do they each need from the process? That’s what we need to identify, measure and manage. Processes have a cost but I can’t think of any process where cost is an output valued by a customer.

My regular column at BPTrends, Practical Process, has just been published. I’d be interested to hear what you think about the latest thoughts on the Compelling Reasons BoK.