As we head into 2017, many in the business community are scratching their heads and wondering just exactly what happened last year.
Around the world, things were turned on their heads. The Brexit vote took everyone by surprise and signalled the start of major changes in Europe. In the United States voters, surprised the pundits by voting President Trump into the White House.
As a result of these shifts, share markets across the globe have been experiencing considerable volatility. No one can predict what the future might hold.
Process disruption
This widespread disruption is also being felt across all facets of the business world, with organisations in the public and private sector now required to achieve new levels of agility and innovation just to survive. The world of process management is also now being disrupted. The old ways of operating have proven to be unsuccessful and, as a result, are being challenged. 2017 will be a time for fundamental process change.
This disruption to process management has not happened overnight. It’s been brewing for years. Over time, increasing numbers of organisations have realised that their current approach to managing critical process know-how is just not providing the level of agility required to keep up with today’s pace of change. Rather than supporting growth and encouraging innovation, processes are proving to be a drag on efficiency and productivity.
For example, relying on a quality manual to provide internal process guidance is no longer, and perhaps has never been, the best approach. Such prescriptive definitions and rules can’t possibly keep up with the rapid changes that are now a common occurrence for most local government organisations.
Today, however, many local government organisations continue to rely on outdated approaches to manage their critical process information, still storing it in formats that are neither accessible to teams across the business, nor easily updated. Issues of process ownership, engagement, and change management abound.
Why change?
Recent history has proven that if the old ways are not working, the masses will rise. In this case, the masses won’t be voters - they will be the organisations customers, constituents and stakeholders.
2017 Process Essentials
So, where does this leave those with responsibility for process management? What changes should local government teams be making now to be ready for whatever an uncertain world may throw at them in 2017?
Here are three process essentials that all local government organisations should strive to have in place in 2017 to ensure they are ready for the challenges that may lie ahead:
1. Ensure process ownership discipline
Make process ownership real by establishing process owners and experts. Process owners should be empowered and given responsibility for the effective operation of their processes. Experts are those people who work with a process every day and know it intimately.
Empowering process owners enables them to proactively improve their processes as opportunities arise. The people who are directly creating, selling, or delivering products to customers are often in the best position to spot problems or solutions, or make improvement suggestions. Ideally, the person who identifies the problem should have the authority to fix it. Not only will this help to lift team engagement, it will also enhance the chances and speed of a successful resolution.
2. Create and sustain real engagement
Once teams of owners and experts have been created, they need to be supported by tools that make managing their processes easy. Ideally, make process information available where and when teams require it by embedding it into the tools they already use every day.
Help teams get things right, learn new processes, and drive consistency with engaging, useful information. If process guidance is easy to understand and easy to use, teams will go back to it again and again. This will enable ongoing engagement and improvement. If process documentation is considered difficult to use by teams, it may as well not exist. It will not be used.
To ensure process improvement remains a day-to-day priority, it’s also important to set up a governance structure and schedule. Visible support from the leadership team and sustained communication are also vital to keep people involved and engaged, driving change.
3. Establish effective change management
As we’ve seen in 2016, the business environment is far from static. In any local government organisation, it’s now essential to find an easy way to update processes as changes occur and to quickly communicate those changes to impacted teams. An out-of-date process can be at best annoying or ineffective, at worst dangerous.
While I think 2017 will be the year of process disruption, it could also be the year in which local government organisations finally master process management. Rather than focusing solely on tools and methodologies, effective process management requires attention to be shifted to empowering engaged teams to improve and succeed. In 2017, it’s time to help well-intentioned teams with clear process ownership, effective change management, and process information in formats that teams across the business will actually use.
