Performance Architecture: A Process Management Framework

Much of the world is currently concerned with the largest outbreak of the Ebola virus in history (WHO). As people travel from and through the countries involved, they bring an increased risk of the disease to themselves and to all with whom they have direct contact. Historically, about 50% of those who contract Ebola do not recover (CDC).

With no proven vaccine for the virus yet developed, as a world we must focus on the containment and prevention of Ebola. This means processes must be developed, implemented, and uniformly and universally adhered to by all involved health professionals and anyone who may have been exposed. As we have seen in the news, the smallest slip-up puts people at risk, fosters criticism, and fans the flames of fear. That said, neglecting to manage the processes put in place to contain Ebola could have dire consequences.

Processes and the Four Levels

We have previously discussed the four organizational levels in this space: Worker, Work, Workplace, and World. Ebola is a challenge at the World level. As such it is a complex and politically charged problem. Here in the U.S. the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) is responsible for developing and disseminating processes for containing Ebola.

Even the most carefully designed and implemented process will fail if it is not competently and vigilantly managed. The news spotlighted examples of process breaches that have resulted in people bringing Ebola into the U.S. as well as the increased risks incurred when those processes are not carefully managed. President Obama has reacted by appointing Ron Klain as the Ebola response coordinator. It is Mr. Klain's charge to manage the processes designed to contain and prevent Ebola. He is, in effect, a functional process manager in a critical role.

Why is the management of a process, whether in response to a lethal threat like Ebola, or in support of a business goal, so critical? Let's look inside our organizations at the Work Level, home of process development, to find out.

Core Business Process

“The core business of an organization is an idealized construct intended to express that organization's “main” or “essential” activity. (Core Business: Wikipedia)

A core business process is a “Key activity or cluster of activities which must be performed in an exemplary manner to ensure a firm's continued competitiveness because it adds primary value to an output.” (Core Process: Wikipedia)

Below are ten core business processes most organizations must have to produce results and fulfill their goals. Each core process has critical sub-processes. What are the core business processes in your organization?

Figure 1. Top Ten Core Processes
(BizManuals)

Geary Rummler describes his concept of a Value Creation System to include core business processes. He cites selling a product or service and managing that core process as:

Product/Service Launched
Product/Service Sold
Product Service Delivered
Customer Support Provided

Each of these process components must be attentively managed to succeed and contribute to the organization's goals, (Rediscovering Value, p.19) which brings us to management.

Management

At its most basic, management is “the act or skill of controlling and making decisions about a business, department, sports team, etc.” (Mirriam Webster).

Effective management has three components:

Processes and procedures
Management skills
Leadership (Rediscovering Value, p.27)

Thus, the failure to manage process is a failure to manage.

The potential consequences of an un-managed process include:

Undermined core business processes
Related processes up- and down-stream at risk for failure
Threatened sub-processes
Potentially, the failure of the organization to produce results, meet goals, and achieve its mission

Problems at the Work/Process Level

What can happen inside an organization when functional managers fail to manage the processes they control? Here is a case example:

“At the start of a meeting about the declining performance of the 300 customer care managers in the field offices of a statewide insurance company, the attending stakeholders “knew” that the customer care managers lacked skills and knowledge and required training. By the meeting's end, they were not so sure. The presenting problem was that the customer care managers could not delegate, but during discussion several concerns unrelated to skills and knowledge surfaced.

“The two performance consultants attending the meeting quietly gathered information for further investigation. Not surprisingly, several issues arose from the work that the customer care managers were responsible for, such as certain lower level tasks usually performed by an entry-level employee. Since so many field offices were short staffed, many customer care managers were simply doing this work themselves because they found it faster than showing an employee how to do it.

“Typically, customer care managers were responsible for customer service research such as locating a missing policy payment or comparing coverages available among several policies. In recent years, operational processes like these had been removed from the field offices and centralized into regional processing centers to provide faster results and gain economies of scale. The processing centers had service level agreements (SLAs) with the field for the tasks they performed, but they were missing their deadlines regularly. Many customer care managers had faced irate customers because some research took longer in the processing centers than it had in their offices, and in frustration, these customer care managers conducted duplicate research simply to serve their customers better.

“The two performance consultants reached agreement with the stakeholders to conduct a full-scale analysis of the situation with a focus on work, process, and practices issues. They named the project Service Fitness and went off to plan their analysis.

“They began by compiling a list of the issues they had heard about in the meeting:

Duplicate research activities in field offices and processing centers

Customer care managers working extensive long hours

Number of customer care managers out on stress leave

Numerous customer complaints

“The consultants further assumed that the customer care managers experienced considerable task interference because they were doing so many tasks in addition to their regular responsibilities. They identified the processing centers' inability to meet many of their SLAs [Service Level Agreements] as a Critical Process Issue, flagging this as a potential driver of other difficulties the customer care managers were experiencing.” (Addison, Haig, Kearny, p. 35-36)

Signals That a Process is Not Being Managed

Strong signals that a process is not being managed are evident in the case above and include:

Products and services are slow to reach the customer
Customers and employees complain
Overtime is excessive
Process delays
Activities are duplicated
Re-work
Manual verification of automated processes
Task interference (Addison, Haig, Kearny, p. 38)

Because processes that enable employees to complete tasks, produce expected results, and contribute to the core business fuel organizations, un-managed processes impede progress and send these and other trouble signals.

Reasons for Process Management Neglect

As performance architects, we have seen the results when functional managers do a fine job of implementing a new or updated process and then move on to other priorities. Their failure to manage the process after implementation may be due to one or more of the following:

Process management is not typically in the curricula for business degrees, nor is it usually found in management training courses or books
Functional managers may not see the need for actively managing the processes they control
Managers confuse change management with process management, thus managing the process change but not the post-implementation process
Managers are not usually evaluated on their process management acuity

Process Management Prescription

So, what can we do to make process management a critical responsibility for functional managers, and how can we build the needed skills to accomplish this?

If one or more signals that a process is not being managed are present (see list above):

Ask if the process worked previously and, if it did, what has changed
Determine what requires managing to support the neglected process – the process itself, the practices of employees using the process, the employees themselves
Re-evaluate existing service level agreements (SLAs) or establish them if they are not in place
Provide oversight up- and down-stream, to and from the core business processes and sub-processes
Monitor the SLAs and adjust as results dictate

Conclusion

We have established that core business processes and sub-processes support an organization's core business. Sub-processes must be integrated horizontally and managed to produce intended results. When a new or updated process is implemented, functional managers must effectively manage the change and then control the environment once implementation is complete. Siloed processes, like anything else in an organization that exists in a vacuum, have no place in high-performing, successful organizations.

References

Addison, R., Haig, C., Kearny, L. (2009). Performance architecture: The art and science of improving organizations. San Francisco, CA. Pfeiffer

Centers for Disease Control. Information About Ebola. Retrieved from www.cdc.gov. November, 2014.

Core Business. In Wikipedia. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_business. October 2014.

Core Process. In BusinessDictionary. Retrieved from http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/core-process.html#ixzz3IooJ0YXn. November, 2014.

Ebola virus disease. Fact Sheet N°103. September 2014. Retrieved from http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs103/en/

Management. In Merriam-Webster Dictionary. Retrieved from http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/management. October, 2014.

Rummler, G. (2011). Rediscovering value. San Francisco, CA. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Top Ten Core Processes. In BizManualz – Policies, Procedures & Processes. Retrieved from http://www.bizmanualz.com/blog/what-are-the-ten-core-business-processes.html. November, 2014.

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Roger Addison & Carol Haig

Roger Addison has a Ph.D. in Educational Psychology from Baylor and is Certified in Performance Improvement Technologies (CPT). He is the co-author of Performance Architecture and an internationally respected performance improvement consultant. He is the founder and Chief Performance Officer of Addison Consulting. Previously he was the Senior Director of Human Performance Improvement for the International Society for Performance Improvement (ISPI) where he was responsible for educational programs and implementing performance improvement systems. Carol Haig is a Certified Performance Technologist (CPT) and has more than 30 years of multi-industry experience partnering with organizations to improve their employees' performance. Carol is known for her superior skills in project management, analysis and problem/opportunity identification, and instructional design and facilitation. She has consulted with executives and line managers, established and managed training departments, trained trainers, written for professional publications and mentored performance consultants. She is co-author of Performance Architecture.