SuccessfulWorkplace

In theory, actively engaging your front line employees in improving the way work is done makes perfect sense. It allows front line workers to learn by doing. It builds capability. It gets the work done. It builds emotional commitment to changes. Yet in practice, leaders seldom choose to actively engage the front line when redesigning work. Why? […]

As a native of France, few things are more curious than the process by which Americans celebrate Thanksgiving. It isn’t an easy holiday for anyone…except maybe the children. But Americans throw themselves into it. They bring their best game. They rise to the occasion every third Thursday in November perhaps because they know it only […]

When it comes to operational improvement, organizations today are light years ahead of where they were two decades ago, but there’s no time to celebrate yesterday’s wins. They won’t immunize your organization against this decade’s march of ongoing progress. That’s because information technology — not just the Internet, but also mobile devices, “big data” for […]

You might think that the corporate human resources function doesn’t have much of a role in improving business processes, such as product development, operations, customer service, or distribution. But I’ve found that it does. HR can propel or inhibit process improvement because it has an outsized influence on people: how they are recruited, rewarded, and […]

It came as a surprise as I left the Navy officer’s life that so many people thought my former world was so different from the ‘civilian’ world I was entering. In my first assignment with Perot Systems, I heard comments like, “Life is easy when you can just order someone to do it,” and, “Everything […]

To make big improvements in productivity and customer service, people in an organization must collaborate across corporate hierarchies, functions, companies, and geographies. Emerging social networking technologies offer new ways to overcome these boundaries. Leading companies such as IBM, Ford, and Avery Dennison are making major improvements in key processes by creating online communities to share […]

I work in frameworks every day. I know their power in business, but for me, an idea is truly proven when it works everywhere. There’s real proof in successful, diverse use cases. Last weekend my family attended the MCAS Miramar Air Show in San Diego. The show is stunning visually. The world famous Blue Angels […]

“Sometimes you have to go up really high to understand how small you are.” If you aren’t familiar with this statement, they represent the words Felix Baumgartner spoke just before stepping out of a capsule on the edge of space 24.2 miles above earth with nothing but a protective suit and parachute to help him back […]

Everything comes down to process. I mean everything an organization does, whether automated or manual, is business process. It is foundational. Participating in the TUCON 2012 event two weeks ago, it was clear to me that every concept that was introduced has its foundation in the business processes that underlie the way work is done. […]

Today I boarded a Southwest plane from San Franciso International Airport bound for John Wayne in Orange County. I’d just spent a couple of days in San Francisco and Silicon Valley and had my mind on the exciting things I’d seen in the world’s technology epicenter. My mind was on the amazing, forward-looking things being […]

Over the last few days I’ve had a number of conversations with professionals, clients and vendors concerned about the amount of jargon and acronyms being thrown around in the Business Process Management industry today. BPM, BPMS, BPMN, BPN, iBPMS, BPA, BPR, IBO, Simulation, Social BPM, Cloud BPM, Operational Intelligence, Business Intelligence, Process Mining, Process Discovery, […]

I had the great pleasure of meeting with several IT industry analysts last week in Boston. In each meeting, the conversation quickly turned to big data, analytics and the growing gap between what most IT departments can do and what businesses feel they need. We can assume the analysts are talking to many others in […]

Many organizations suffer from a tragic pattern: The chief executive officer launches a new change program with great fanfare and intentions, only to shelve it a few years later with little to show for great expenditures of time and consulting fees. How can you break this cycle? Consider a health insurance company that has been […]

I recently wrote about a great customer service experience. It isn’t always quite that good… It seems every year I get to experience at least one business process that goes horribly wrong. Here’s the latest, with names removed to protect the guilty. I purchased a new laptop back in June. At the same time, I […]