It's not easy: managing through processes. Viewpoints and concepts of involved managers and employees differ. When can we say we are managing processes (instead of departments)? What do we mean by a (Lean) process management system?
In our organization, but probably many more, we have had many discussions about these questions.
Over the years our discussions and discovery have led to a framework of mutual understanding of what we mean by managing processes, consisting of 9 building blocks. Hope this helps on your journey in managing and improving processes!
Our process management framework / 9 building blocks:
If you don't know what you have, how can you manage it. It starts with identifying your processes. This is a social construction effort. When you have a supported list (or visual process hierarchy/landscape map), you can start talking about roles and governance.
Who is the process owner? Who is process manager? Who maintains process standards? And how do these people with these roles relate to line management and work floor? What are their tasks, meeting structures, reporting structure? These are important questions to answer.
Then roles need to be assigned, people need to be trained and coached. Key requirement: really committed people that want, can and do.
2. Standards
How do we want to work together, delivering value to the customer? What behavior is needed, who does what when how. This needs to be clear and people need to be trained in it.
3. Execute process
Of course, this is the main most important element in process management: the actual delivery of value to customers. Employees, coached by the team lead/process managers, perform the tasks and deliver services and products.
4. Manage the execution
Here is the operational PDCA: the day/week standup, the checks on how people are doing and how the process is performing, the standard leader work to monitor performance, employee wellbeing and customer satisfaction. It requires daily management, being able to respond to issues - illness, supplier delays, quality issues, sudden changes in demand, etc. It also requires involving employees in identifying these issues or improvement suggestions.
5. Manage improvements
There will always be issues that need improvement or improvement suggestions. In addition, from the strategy (process) plan, certain improvement targets might have been defined. This manage improvement is aimed at deciding which improvements are done when / in what sequence and then plan for this improvements to be realized + manage this to results. The second PDCA. A toyota kata method works fine, for instance in combination with teams using the A3 process, C5 process or breaktrough projects.
6. Deliver improvement
This is the actual work of improvement teams, working structured on process improvements: what is the issue? what is the goal? what are facts (go to the gemba)? What do the facts say? What is the root cause? What are possible countermeasures? What are testresults of experiments? Will we deploy the improvement wider / in standards? Here the third PDCA can be seen.
7. Plan and manage alignment
So many stakeholders and voices, so many requirements. These need to be aligned and decided upon: what can we realistically do? What does management want? What means can they offer (budget, people)? What do our customers want? Are their needs evolving? What do our value chain partners need? What do our employees need? And what legal and societal requirements are there that impact the process?
All these requirements should lead the a process strategy plan, giving goals and objectives on: run targets-KPI's, specific improvement targets, maturity targets and people development targets. These lead to the fourth PDCA.
8. Develop people and process (management) maturity
We don't build products, we help people grow to build our products. We develop people in two areas: their craftmanship in the process and their ability to support the management and improvement of the process. The culture should be: you hire people for 3 things: to deliver value, to help improve the value and to grow as a human being.
In addition, based on the process strategy plan, specific steps should be taken to adopt, professionalize and innovate practices in the other process management building blocks.
9. Engagement, personal leadership and culture
A true winner organization needs people that are committed and that are coached in taking ownership. It's helping them learning to see, and manage to learn. The culture should be supporting: errors are seen as opportunities, not a reason to blame. We improve together - using our collective knowledge. We measure to learn, not to evaluate. And we dare to experiment.
What do you think? Are these the building blocks you see as critical in a process managed organization? Or do we miss vital capabilities? Let me know!
