SuccessfulWorkplace

Process is about action. When we talk about processes, we’re talking about everything an organization does in its ongoing operations. And so, it makes sense that in order to improve operational performance, many organizations use process improvement techniques such as process mapping to get a handle on all the actions that make up their process flow. The problem is, […]

I recently attended the Criminal Justice Management event in London and presented a panel discussion on the topic of process efficiency within UK government. The event schedule was quite varied, with subjects on Intelligence Led Policing, Enabling Communication through Interpretation and Translation Services, Improving Performance Management and Boosting Workforce Capability and powered by both process […]

These are crazy times for change, threatening to disrupt so much of what we’ve worked so hard to achieve over the past decades of information technology and business process. The toughest part of disruption is knowing that what took so much energy to figure out can be so quickly plowed under by something smarter, faster […]

We’re a funny lot. For years we’ve been talking about data and process as though they were two different things. Guess what…they’re not. Process involves the activities of getting work done and data both describes process and is also the beginning and end points of work. We consume data in processes and we produce data […]

…that’s right. I don’t belong here. In fact, what the hell am I doing here? Before you jump to the wrong conclusions, those aren’t my words. You’ll know whose words they are in just a minute. But before that, I want to spend a moment to talk about something that seems to be (but probably […]

Earlier today, I read something that made me snort on my afternoon coffee. Not just because it was funny, but because, to me it had some additional insight that I thought was worth sharing with you, especially when you think about Intelligent Processes and how they can be crafted for a BPM initiative. Here it […]

Woe unto you if you don’t think through your decisions to buy and use Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). That’s right…woe unto you. As more and more organizations use SaaS applications (in 2011, Forrester projected 18 by 2013 and said we were at 9.6 by Fall 2012), the complexity of integrating all of those silo’d applications is rising […]

I just had a 2 and a half hour hole blown in what had started out as a massively productive day. Indeed, I’m so frustrated as I write that I’m going to grab a quick bite and try to squeeze in a run during lunch hour. Here’s the story and here’s why it matters for […]

How often do we think about the way we usually operate at work? Whether we’re performing an informal five-step process for evaluating a new proposal, or setting priorities for managing our time, how often do we think about consistency and efficiency? Our ability to improve the ways we do things depends on defining and shaping […]

Ken Robinson recently delivered yet another great talk on the state of American education. He pointed out that countries that take a more organic approach (e.g. Finland) perform much better overall than those who take a mechanistic, standardized approach (e.g. The United States with “No Child Left Behind”, emphasis on testing). Remarkably, the organic approach, […]

What type of company makes a good target to be acquired? There are the obvious revenue, strategic, market, product, and R&D considerations. Those are all opportunity plays and are in themselves good reasons, but what about the risk? How do you decide in advance which companies can be acquired without being destroyed? For that, there […]

My esteemed colleague here at SuccessfulWorkplace wrote a piece about using frameworks to help build business processes for startups when they begin to scale up operations. In the post Tom states that; To make the successful transition to the next stage of growth, companies need to formalize management, communications and processes. To a certain extent […]

In my other benchmarking posts I’ve explained that you’ll never get to a level of precision where you will truly have an exact comparative benchmark value. It has been proven and noted that the same person asked the same question will give you different answers. But, even if it were possible, you would not be […]

We have a basic human need to know what’s happening around us. More and more, companies are addressing this need by exposing parts of their process that never saw the light of day in the past. Done well, it reduces anxiety and helps make customers into fans of whatever company they’re engaging with. Three recent […]