More on the Process Approach

I just HAVE to thank Mr. Michael Hammer (Author of the book "The Agenda") on the immense amount of light he has thrown on the confusions surrounding the "Process Approach"

First off, a "Process Owner" is NOT someone who is supposed doing all the work related to a process... He is the one who "designs" a process. He draws up the process flowchart, determines the outcome of each and every step of the process, and generally creates the blueprint for a process..

Then comes the guy who has to "implement" the process that has been designed. He assigns the personnel responsible for each process step, and overall supervises whether the process is carried out as per the design..

One person may be responsible for "implementing" many processes.

Therefore, for example, if we take the process of say "Handling a customer Complaint"for an entertainment gadget, the process may say:

1. Customer service guy receives complaint from customer
2. If it is not in written form CS guy documents it and get a confirmation from customer
3. CS gets model number, year of purchase and other information
4. Technician visits customer, checks for origin of problem
5. Technician documents the findings and conveys them to customer
6. If customer wants to go ahead and repair, technician provides quote, Else he quotes the minimum trouble shooting charges, receives it, provides receipt to customer and leaves
7. If customer accepts quote, the repairs are done, gadget is operated and customer has to acknowledge that the issue has been resolved
8. Customer pays up, signs in the acknowledgement and get the receipt for payment
9. Technician leaves
10. In the back office, a data entry operator may update the information for that particular serial Number device with the details of the repairs for future reference
11. File closed for now.

In this example, the CS and technicians are NOT the process owners because they are executing the steps assigned to them.

The supervisor to whom the CS folks and technicians report is not the process owner because he is just checking if the process defined is being followed by the right folks at each process step.

So who is the process owner? The strategist who came up with the blueprint is. He thought out required outcome of the process, the need, the steps, the interaction of the steps, the metrics to check if a process is efficient enough and meeting its intended purpose and so on…

In most cases the process owner may not be a single mind- it would be a collection of minds including those that execute it, but ultimately the onus would lie with the one with executive authority to give the GO to the deployment of a process.

The process owner would be responsible to check if the process is performing as intended- the supervisor may collect data, analyse and present it to the owner, and again, the actual executors (for lack of correct word) who perform the steps provide the information for analysis.

Getting a grip on the science behind the process approach would make process based organisations a lot more comfortable with the idea and slowly wipe out the misconception that processes cause overheads.