In this Column, Alan Ramias identifies what he considers to be a disturbing trend among some prominent process advocates, specifically to fit process inside “Operational Excellence.” He examines the “subjugation of process” and why we should question the wisdom of tucking BPM in Op Ex.
Alan Ramias
Alan Ramias is a Partner of the Performance Design Lab (PDL). He has had twenty-five years of experience in performance improvement and organization effectiveness.
Alan was employed by Motorola for ten years as an internal consultant on organizational performance. As a member of the team that founded Motorola University, he was the first person to introduce Geary Rummler's pioneering concepts in process improvement and management to business units within Motorola. Alan advocated and led several of the first groundbreaking projects in process improvement that evolved to the invention of six sigma and Motorola's winning of the first Malcolm Baldrige Award in 1988. Alan was also involved in major restructuring projects at Motorola, and in job design work, compensation planning, workplace literacy, and educational program development.
After joining The Rummler-Brache Group in 1991, Alan led major successful performance improvement engagements within Fortune 500 companies. His experience spanned several industries and the full spectrum of corporate functions and processes, such as strategic planning, manufacturing, product development, financial management, and supply chain. Major clients included Shell, Hewlett-Packard, 3M, Citibank, Motorola, Steelcase, Citgo, Hermann Miller, Louisiana-Pacific, and Bank One. After leading many high-profile projects, he became a partner and Managing Director of Consulting Services at RBG. He led development of much of RBG's products and services, and was responsible for selecting, training and mentoring RBG's consultant teams. Upon leaving RBG, Alan founded his own consulting company, where he continued to practice in the field of performance consulting. He was also involved in several organizational restructuring initiatives in the U.S. and in Asia.
Alan can be reached at aramias@ThePDLab.com.
Process Improvement: When Clients Act like Jerks
June 4, 2018 , By
Alan Ramias takes on an issue that BPM practitioners frequently encounter–how to handle bad behaving .clients. After a long career as a performance consultant, Alan has collected a virtual anthology of how to handle misbehaving clients and bosses, and he shares them here.
Process Improvement: Process Scope versus Project Scope
February 5, 2018 , By
In order to conduct an improvement project, you need to figure out the scope of the effort. What should you include (and therefore exclude)? Where do the boundaries of the effort begin and end? Alan Ramias addresses these questions in this month’s Column.
Performance Improvement: Sole Survivor: Capitalizing on Momentum
November 6, 2017 , By
Alan has written a series of Columns targeted at the BPM expert who has set up shop as a sole practitioner. This Column is about some of the things the BPM expert can do to capitalize on early successes, and prepare for the opportunity to expand his/her influence.
Process Improvement: Sole Survivor: Finding that First Opportunity
July 3, 2017 , By
Alan Ramias recounts his first experiences as an internal improvement consultant at Motorola in the early 1980’s—a time when the notions of BPM and improving business processes were unknown. From that experience and those in the intervening years, Alan has gleaned several lessons which he shares in this Column.
Process Improvement: Sole Survivor: How to be Successful as a One-Person BPM Shop
April 3, 2017 , By
Alan Ramias launches a series of Columns the purpose of which is to suggest things you can do early in the game to get somewhere with BPM when there is only you (at least at first).The early Columns will focus on tactics for early success, as opposed to tools and methods. Read the first in Alan’s Sole Survivor series.
Process Improvement: Are Process Architectures Useful?
January 2, 2017 , By
In his Column last month Paul Harmon questioned the value of developing a detailed process architecture. The debate continues on the BPTrends LinkedIn site. In this Column, Alan Ramias reflects on his own extensive experience with process architectures and how his opinion about the value of such an exercise has changed several times.
Process Improvement: Lean Six Sigma…Always Together?
September 5, 2016 , By
Because Alan Ramias began his career at Motorola in the 1980’s when the company decided to improve product quality tenfold by combining Lean and Six Sigma techniques, he was a bit baffled when articles began to appear many years later extolling the advantages of unifying the methodologies. In this Column, he recounts the processes Motorola undertook to educate their employees on implementing the combined methodologies. Read this interesting account of the history of Lean Six Sigma.
Process Improvement: Real Process Ownership
June 6, 2016 , By
What is real process ownership? Applying his twenty-five years of experience as a consultant in performance improvement at the Performance Design Lab, Alan Ramias defines real process ownership and also suggests how to create and sustain it in your organization.
Process Improvement: Business Modeling—Is That What We Do?
February 29, 2016 , By
Alan Ramias doesn’t think the BPM label adequately describes what many process practitioners actually do. In his experience as a consultant called in to provide solutions to a variety of process problems, he begins by modeling the existing organization before seeking solutions. Many organizations do not properly identify their problems and by modeling the organization as it exists, it is easier to identify the problems and opportunities and to gain consensus regarding the solutions and establish priorities. In his Column he presents The Value Creation Hierarchy, the frame of reference he and his colleagues use to do the modeling.
