As you may recall from my inaugural outing in this space, I believe (as do my RFG analyst colleagues and most of our user clients) that communication -- talking to all involved early and often -- is critical to success with BPM. Two follow-on questions leap immediately to mind: who should be talking to whom, and about what?
These questions can have several answers, some of which are (or should be) obvious, and many of which are not. Also, the list and prioritization of these questions and their answers can vary widely from enterprise to enterprise. Nonetheless, there are some high-level approaches to them that can be applied fairly broadly, with fairly high likelihood of success. One critical subject of BPM-related discussion at any enterprise is how business decisions, about BPM and other subjects, get made.
The November 2006 issue of the Business Performance Management Forum's Brainwaves newsletter includes an article that is (or should be) required reading for anyone involved in business performance or process management. It's "Decision Making: A Serious and Growing Problem," by Robert E. Cannon. Mr. Cannon is a consultant and creator of "The Cannon Advantage," which "helps visionary leaders make decisions that gain a competitive advantage," according to the mini-bio at the end of his article.
The piece is a compendium of indications from numerous sources. All appear to agree that business analytics, intelligence, optimization, performance, and process management efforts are doomed to failure, from the same cause - consistently bad decision-making. A sample cheery bit: a quote from Paul C. Nutt, author of the book "Why Decisions Fail" and a decision-making process wonk (my description entirely) for more than two decades. Mr. Nutt says "decisions fail half the time."
So this means no more than half of everything dependent upon decisions made by businesspeople - including, presumably, enterprise IT decision-makers and staff - is likely to work. No better attitude with which to begin a new year, eh?
Fortunately, the Brainwaves article includes some glimmers of hope. One is the citation of a November 2005 Business Week Online article entitled "Why Decisions Need Design." The short answer includes fundamental historical and continuing changes in the nature of work and workforces. But there are two take-aways that matter most.
1. Business analytics, intelligence, optimization, performance, and process management efforts require foundations built upon the best possible business and technology decisions.
2. Consistently good business and technology decisions absolutely require foundations built upon consistent, enforceable, well-defined, and well-documented business processes.
So effective BPM (which can stand for business process and/or performance management in this case) requires consistently good decisions, which require effective BPM. Sounds impossibly cyclical, but in reality, this dynamic is simply recursive and iterative. In other words, discuss the decision to be made, make decisions about the underlying decision-making process, test it, grade it, refine it, document everything, learn from experience, then lather, rinse, and repeat.
All of this points out that effective BPM discussions must include both IT and business decision-makers, as well as senior, strategy-focused executives and line-of-business (LOB) leaders who focus more on day-to-day and immediate concerns. And initial discussions should focus on business goals, including how best to make good business decisions, before even considering "drilling down" into any BPM specifics.
At many enterprises, IT decision-makers should -- and perhaps may have to -- initiate these discussions. After all, BPM, like almost all important enterprise activities, is an IT-supported set of functions. Also, whether it's fair or not, IT folks could wait a long, long time before being invited to or included in any serious BPM discussions initiated by their business colleagues, many of whom are, shall we say, often unclear about the critical links between BPM and IT.
So now we have a few clues about who should be talking to whom, and at least some starting topics. Next: some thoughts about how best to engage and "get the word out" to stakeholders and observers, to expand these critical conversations. Stay tuned...and send along any thoughts or experiences you'd like to see included in this conversation!
Leave a comment