In our previous post I referred to an internal survey and some of the results which led me to question the current basis of social BPM. Here’s a bit more on that.
All through the past year we asked the participants of our BPM training courses to take part in a post-training survey on process awareness. Although created only to help us improve our trainings, some of the results we find to be sufficiently remarkable to share them here with you:
|
Question |
True |
Agree somewhat |
Disagree totally |
| In my work environment we have process transparency |
36% |
55% |
9% |
| Process performance and operational responsibilities are clearly assigned |
18% |
64% |
18% |
| Processes are well communicated |
18% |
46% |
36% |
| Process quality is regularly checked and improved |
18% |
64% |
18% |
| Processes are treated as an IT issue |
27% |
27% |
46% |
| I’m aware of a dedicated recipient for process improvement suggestions |
27% |
36% |
37% |
| I’m aware who my process managers and process owners are |
36% |
27% |
36% |
While we don’t claim that these numbers constitute a statistically representative sample, they do more or less reflect our day to day experiences when talking to clients.
I’d suggest that this is where ‘Social BPM’ becomes really important. Processes and process improvement is still a people business with lots of communication and interactions involved. The higher the process awareness level, the faster process discovery and improvement development can be achieved.
Closing thought: If we don’t change these numbers (address the underlying causes), no BPMS nor any process improvement initiative will deliver the results we expect and require.
Great post!
We struggle to even put “BPM” in our marketing materials, because so many clients aren’t aware that this is a discipline. In fact, we talk more about “improving productivity” than anything else in initial conversations.
The process improvement world still has a long way to go in educating everyday stakeholders that process management is *everyone’s* business. Keep fighting the good fight, sir!