How Process Management Can Revitalize Your Company

Can your company operate at peak efficiency? This isn’t a trick: Operational improvement is an ongoing process that responds to incremental developments as well as broad strategic shifts. Whereas smaller companies may be able to make such improvements on an ad-hoc basis, midsized corporations are better served with an established process management system that clearly defines processes across functional silos, addresses issues as they arise, and measures results on a consistent basis. Here are some of the considerations that go into developing a process management system for your company:

Build a culture of responsibility: Process improvement means continuous change, which can only succeed if employees at every level embrace their role over their task list. “The biggest challenge I see in a midsize company is, How do I operate with accountability and enable people and trust them to manage their processes?” says Scott Smith, President, Kirk Consulting in Dallas, Texas. “The old-school way was to have a COO or CMO who can step into a room and tell people, ‘This is the way it's going to be.’ Now there are a whole lot more people involved, and it gets a little harder to hold people accountable for process performance.”  

Understand how as well as what: “Many people understand what their teams do in an organization,” says Chris Ewing, EVP, Head of Strategic Execution and Six Sigma at Regions Bank. “Process management goes to the next level and understands how they do it.” By mapping a process from beginning to end, even as it crosses functional boundaries, you can uncover bottlenecks, redundancies, and other pain points. What’s more, by documenting how things are done, you are creating institutional knowledge that persists when individuals come and go in particular roles.

Follow the money: “Start with the highest-level processes in a company,” Ewing explains “Those are really broken down into four core groupings: marketing, sales, service, and fulfillment.” He suggests mapping out these macro processes, then drilling down to sub-processes to uncover “leakage: complaints, lost business, re-work or inefficiencies. Leakage is lost business.”

Get granular: When you uncover a leaky process, break it down into its components, says Barry McPhee, a Vermont-based certified project management professional (PMP) with experience in the public and private sectors. “A process-improvement plan first describes the purpose, start, and end of the process, its inputs and outputs, the data required, its owners and stakeholders,” he explains. “That is your ‘as-is’ process. You can similarly describe the ‘to-be,’ ideal process that meets performance targets, and do a gap analysis to get from point A to point B.”

The climate in which your business operates is anything but static. Similarly, process improvement isn’t a one-time deal. It requires understanding and managing these processes on a continuous basis – in essence, keeping the tools of your trade well honed.

In or Out - Assessing and Aligning Resources and Initiatives against Strategic Priorities

Key factors jeopardizing an organization’s alignment of initiatives and resources begin at strategic planning, trickle down through initiative and project oversight, to management of project-level requirements, communications and resources. Awareness of the below five factors put project managers in position to identify the changing face of an initiative’s projects, enabling proactive resource assessment and alignment.

Strategic Planning 

A neglected strategic plan muddies project prioritization, compromising project alignment with strategic initiatives. Lack of a strategy > goals > objectives > projects path impedes input from Line-of-Business (LoB) leaders, creating space for personal agendas straying from strategy.

Maintaining an up-to-date strategy with ongoing LoB leader input reinforces a project’s business case through its link to strategic direction. Knowing project priority enables a project manager to defend project alignment within the strategic plan. A stable charter and statement of work should follow, steadying resource assessment.

Oversight–Initiative & Project

An oversight committee is a key vehicle through which to update/fine-tune the strategic plan. An inattentive committee can leave initiative and project sponsorship unclear. The resulting lack of LoB leader and senior management representation can undercut project buy-in.

A dedicated oversight committee assures ongoing scope assessment and alignment. LoB leader representatives will better understand projects’ inter-relationships. ‘Go-to-market time’ project scheduling improves. Initiative and project sponsorship solidifies; initiatives better align to produce major business outcomes. Proactive resource adjustment improves.

Requirements/Scope

When project requirements are unclear, frequent scope-change occurs, generating schedule and resource churn. The project manager may overlook stakeholders, leading to poor defense in keeping resources typically already in demand.
The solution entails strategic plan-level thinking and stakeholder identification, then thorough requirement-gathering from strategy down to detailed components.  Requirement-collecting sources should trace a strategy > business case > charter > stakeholder register path, for project manager and oversight committee review. Monitor scope adjustments proactively according to strategic plan updates.  Utilize a scope change control process including a change control board, ideally an oversight subcommittee. 

 Communication

A disused communication matrix can lead to project-based workers being out of touch with sponsor, oversight committee, cross-functional projects and stakeholders. At initiative level, learning late of a new project’s priority or timeframe risks misalignment or loss of resources. Miscommunication with sponsor or oversight could further exacerbate turnover.

Mitigation here starts with a communication matrix well-tended from charter forward, inclusive of all stakeholders. Maintaining robust communication will enhance buy-in from organizational leadership and project and initiative sponsors.  

 

Resources

Resource management itself is key to aligning resources and initiatives against strategic priorities. Siloed projects are vulnerable to unanticipated personnel changes. Turnover due to resources pulled to other projects can result from poor communication across projects or with senior management. Ensuring buy-in through strong project links to the strategic plan, and regular communication with sponsor, oversight committee, and LoB leaders, fosters awareness of changes between projects.  Monitoring changes at strategy and initiative level can alert a project manager to upcoming resource adjustments.

 

The Takeaway
Project managers must manage the five factors discussed here to assess and align resources best suited to execute against strategy.
Risk management should encircle the five factors, encompassing initiatives and projects.  Identify risk at strategy, oversight, Line of Business, initiative and project levels. Allow for the definition of success to change, and flag senior management when opportunities (good risks) might improve the strategic plan. 

Line of Business leaders are vital; they must assess whether the work within their business unit aligns to the organization’s strategic goals.  Consequently, their ongoing presence at strategy, oversight, initiative and project levels is critical to resource assessment and alignment.

New and Improved: How Process Management Can Revitalize Your Company

Is your company operating at peak efficiency? That’s something of a trick question: Operational improvement is an ongoing process that responds to incremental developments as well as broad strategic shifts. Whereas smaller companies may be able to make such improvements on an ad-hoc basis, midsized corporations are better served with an established process management system that clearly defines processes across functional silos, addresses issues as they arise, and measures results on a consistent basis. Here are some of the considerations that go into developing a process management system for your company:

Build a culture of responsibility: Process improvement means continuous change, which can only succeed if employees at every level embrace their role over their task list. “The biggest challenge I see in a midsize company is, How do I operate with accountability and enable people and trust them to manage their processes?” says John Krueger, President, Krueger Consulting in Dallas, Texas. “The old-school way was to have a COO or CMO to step into a room and tell people, ‘This is the way it's going to be.’ Now more people are involved, so it gets a little harder to hold people accountable for process performance.”

Understand how as well as what: “Many people understand what their teams do in an organization,” says Chris McPhail, EVP, Head of Strategic Execution and Six Sigma at Boroughs Bank. “Process management goes to the next level and understands how they do it.” By mapping a process from beginning to end, even as it crosses functional boundaries, you can uncover bottlenecks, redundancies, and other pain points. What’s more, by documenting how things are done, you're creating institutional knowledge that persists when individuals come and go in particular roles.

Follow the money: “Start with the highest-level processes in a company,” Ewing explains “Those are really broken down into four core groupings: marketing, sales, service, and fulfillment.” He suggests mapping out these macro processes, then drilling down to sub-processes to uncover “leakage: complaints, lost business, re-work or inefficiencies. Leakage is lost business.”

Get granular: When you uncover a leaky process, break it down into its components, says Barry McPhee, a Vermont-based certified project management professional (PMP) with experience in the public and private sectors. “A process-improvement plan first describes the purpose, start, and end of the process, its inputs and outputs, the data required, its owners and stakeholders,” he explains. “That is your ‘as-is’ process. You can similarly describe the ‘to-be,’ ideal process that meets performance targets, and do a gap analysis to get from point A to point B.”

 The climate in which your business operates is anything but static. Similarly, process improvement isn’t a one-time deal. It requires understanding and managing these processes on a continuous basis – in essence, keeping the tools of your trade well honed.