Roger Tregear discusses a pyramid of process tasks and points out that process improvement, while important, isn’t the complete job facing a business manager.

Roger Tregear cites the Process Owner as “a lynchpin in effective process-based management.” To be successful, a Process Owner must have deep knowledge about the objectives, operation, opportunities, and challenges of their process. In this Column, Roger provides an insight into what the ideal process owner that might look like.

Although many skills are needed to be successful in process management and improvement, they seldom come to full force naturally. Instead, they need to be discovered, valued, and nurtured. Success in process-based management requires many competencies, including hard and soft. In this Column, Roger Tregear focuses on the soft side. What are they anyway?

Roger Tregear states at the beginning of his Column that “The purpose of a successful Process Improvement Project (PIP) is to create, not a To Be, but a new As Is.” The work is not done until the change projects are completed, and the benefits have been delivered. Without delivered, proven, valued business benefits the PIP was, by our own process definitions, a waste. Steps to assure your improvement project is not a waste are inside.

During his experience as a Process Consultant, Roger has spent a lot of time talking to many senior people about the “joys of process” and its benefits. The majority, he says, are waiting to be convinced, and that will only happen if “Boardish” is the common language. “What’s that?” you may ask. You know what to do to find out.

Roger Tregear’s advice is model for a purpose. Carefully choosing a set of high-impact processes and proactively managing them will ultimately result in enhanced improvement in organizational performance. He provides some useful steps toward accomplishing this end in his Column this month.

Roger Tregear’s Column talks about why Process-based Management is a continuous cycle, driven by a well-defined target performance profile and shaped by continuous performance analysis – not just about isolated process-improvement projects. When we activate process-based management we take the idea of genuine continuous improvement seriously. Read details of how you can achieve continuous improvement in your organization and the benefits that will accrue.

In this Column, Roger (re)introduces what he considers to be the most important process performance management tool ever invented – the Process Behavior Chart (PBC), aka the XmR Chart. According to Roger, “Using a PBC allows us to focus on what is important and avoid chasing shadows.” Read how you can use the chart in your BPM practice.

In seeking to better manage and improve business processes, we are often focused on elements of logistics and physical operation. Roger points out, however, that there are still many processes that require the involvement of people, i.e. human processes that are critical to overall performance. Roger suggests that we should incorporate human elements as well logistics into our process improvement efforts. In this Column, Roger reflects on an incident that occurred in London involving an abandoned umbrella to make his point.