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The cover article in the May Intelligent Enterprise magazine, "Never Rest" correctly identifies two types of thinking. This difference in thinking is starting to provide a critical distinction between the perspectives of business leaders.

The new business reality is one of increasing customer power, commoditization, and globalization. Customers can locate and acquire the best product/service for their needs from anywhere in the globe. Without a process oriented approach, you cannot deliver the ever improving products/services that are being demanded. A process approach requires that you:

  • understand your processes
  • understand what matters to your customers
  • understand how to eliminate, modify, or automate processes
  • understand who is responsible for each process

One way of expressing the business process improvement method is Measure, Monitor, Manage. Determining what to measure and getting accurate measurements are the key to the monitoring and managing steps. Key to this approach is commitment by management trained in measuring processes.

The converse to this process thinking happens when executives stick to their narrow discipline and don't look at the business as a flow toward the customer. The article suggests that the causes for this are:

  • Leaders don't care - Executives are absorbed in their narrow functional area such as mergers and acquisitions and don't care about day-to-day operations.
  • Leaders can't focus - Too many narrowly defined initiatives are presented and compete for attention.
  • Leaders don't know how to change their perspectives - An organizational chart is their only view instead of looking at process flow.

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