Five Processes
In many businesses I used to recognize four processes:
- The official process
The process the organization prescribes -
The perceived process
The process people tell they are using if we ask what they are doing -
The actual process
The process people appear to follow if we observe what they are doing -
The target process
The process the people should follow for best results
These processes are all different and the challenge is to move them towards
each other so that they are more the same.
Recently, however, when I was trying* to coach a CRM (Customer Relations Management) project,
I recognized another process that we should be aware of:
- The imposed process
The process the (software) system wants to impose upon the people
* I tried to coach this project.
In spite of the much more efficient results, management seemed not interested to
provide the 'workers' with additional coaching they were begging for, so I abandoned the project.
If management is not really interested, they apparently have a different agenda, and any improvement
the 'workers' are doing their best for will, in practice, not prevail.
The project was cancelled shortly after. That was, in my opinion, the first good management decision.
