Process Design

The organization’s capacity to design and efficiently implement changes in core work processes is crucial for responding effectively to the challenges of growth. Internal or external pressures can quickly arise that require radically altered work processes for new conditions of operation. Major work flows may need to be re-designed in order to control costs, to enhance revenues or to align personnel in formerly separate groups or organizations.

Conventional process re-engineering can produce temporary breakthroughs but usually does not address the central issue of building an organization’s capacity to design its own processes when its operating or strategic conditions shift. Our approach emphasizes people first and material and information processes second. We help organizations to see their work flows as networks of human commitments, which can be continuously re-negotiated as needed.

We typically engage a management or project team in a joint, comprehensive assessment of its core work processes using an “enterprise map.” Once team members reach consensus on overall strengths and weaknesses via the map, they can generate plans to address deficiencies through the re-design of key processes, which will have the greatest impact on overall organization performance.

We focus on the strings of commitments that employees make and manage with each other to produce goods or services that will satisfy customers and other key stakeholders. Our approach enables employees to map complex processes clearly and simply in order to produce both incremental and radical improvements in efficiency and customer satisfaction. Since the focus is on internal as well as external customer satisfaction in every process transaction, a customer-orientation pervades the entire organization. (See PDF article: Commitment-based Process Design for a detailed description of the methodology.)

Our approach to analyzing and redesigning core work processes, or to designing new ones from scratch, is extremely economical. We are able to provide a shared perspective that enhances collaboration in typical areas of conflict, such as between line managers and IT experts. We also develop in-house capacity by training line managers to lead process design work.