An excellent primer on business process management

In his brand-new book, You Think You Are Doing Well? Become a Winner with Customer-centric Process Leadership, Janne Ohtonen has created what may well be the best primer on BPM to date. The book is written as a 52-week series of chapters that cover a broad range of business process management topics. Each is meant to be digestible in one sitting and together are a very complete view of a topic that few agree on.

Outside-in perspective

What I liked most about the book was the way it was framed — that business needs to change its focus from the outmoded structures of inside-out hierarchy that defined the industrial revolution. Instead, business process needs to be designed from the perspective of touch points with the customer. From the very first chapter, Ohtonen talks about how we got here and why we need outside-in thinking, where the customer’s perspective drives how work is done:

Adam Smith participated in a labour revolution that transformed the business world. He lived in a time of political change, founding Americas’ industrialisation, and a new optimism that the on from the restraints of the past. During this time, the foundation was laid that established a way of working that has survived and thrived until the present day.

And yet now, more than ever, is a time to take a careful look at the past to guide the way for not only surviving the current economic turmoil, but also to prepare us to thrive in the twenty-first century business world order, where the customer has become central to everything we do.

Even better, the book is set up as a way to strengthen personal leadership and business skills over time. This is the genius of the way it is written as no individual learns a new way of thinking in one sitting. Time is required for new ideas to percolate into our heads and the 52-week approach offers just that.

Not just BPM

A look at the chapter titles demonstrates that this isn’t a book limited to process geekery. There are chapters on how to become a better person, how to deal with your boss, and how the reader can gain more influence. Business process management is such a broad term that managing process well really does involve these topics that may seem more appropriate in a self-help book. And rather than preach, each chapter has a series of provocative questions that allow the reader to take each chapter and apply its ideas to their own environment.

This is a well though through book that can help anyone focused on business process management and personal growth. I recommend you pick up a copy and start your own journey.

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Christopher Taylor