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Disabled by Enablers, Punished by Rewards Last time, in “That Squishy Culture Stuff,” we started a series of Columns dedicated to making the all-important issues of organizational culture more accessible and less “squishy” for BPM professionals. A common refrain lately has been that when significant business process change is introduced, people and culture are more likely to be the stumbling blocks than technology or process design. Of course, a proper job of process design considers many factors, including culture and human motivation, but I regularly encounter situations in which that wasn’t the case. Apparently it was assumed that the right activities, assigned to the appropriate roles, and supported by good technology would do the trick. Issues of people and culture are frequently avoided because… well, because they’re “the soft stuff” and seem vague and squishy. The point of this series is to illustrate that there are techniques and frameworks that enable us to take a more rigorous approach to these factors. In this Column we’ll look at the “Six Enablers” framework I use to force consideration of factors other than process design and the application of technology in both understanding the current process, and designing a new process.
A recap, and the point The short definition of organizational culture I offered in the previous Column was: “the underlying beliefs, values, and assumptions held by members of an organization, and the practices and behaviors that exemplify and reinforce them.” I also included Mckinsey’s widely quoted and succinct definition: "The way things get done around here." To that, I’ll add the even more succinct: “What is good” or, more specifically, “What is good behavior.” Focusing on behavior makes sense, given that culture is often said to be evident in the behavior of individuals and groups, and exemplified and amplified by the behavior of leaders. The connection we care about is that process performance is at least in part due to the sum of the behaviors of people and organizations participating in the process – in other words, due to the prevailing culture. Any factors that influence this behavior ought to be of primary interest to the BPM professional. Various BPM commentators have suggested that culture is “the great mystery,” but some of the factors influencing individual, organizational, and process behavior are relatively straightforward – you just have to look for them.
The enablers of a business process An enabler is a factor that can be adjusted to impact the behavior of a business process. The framework I’ve used for over fifteen years includes six enablers: 1. Process Design and Workflow 2. Information Systems 3. Motivation and Measurement 4. Human Resources and Organization 5. Policies and Rules 6. Facilities (or other important factor)
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Figure 1 illustrates the enablers along with some points to help explain each – more information and examples are coming up. This chart also illustrates that a business process in turn enables the mission, strategy, goals, and objectives (MSGO) of the enterprise, and should reflect the culture, core competencies, and management style of the enterprise.
Figure 1: An enabler-based framework for working with business processes
Fit with process analysis and design A primary intent of modeling and analyzing an existing (“as-is”) business process is to reveal where the enablers are actually impeding process performance. In other words, where the enablers are acting as disablers. This is generally unintentional – the oft-mentioned “unintended consequences,” or what my friend Tony calls “collateral damage.” When we design a new (“tobe”) business process, we should ensure that all enablers are adjusted to support (to enable) the new process within the constraints of business priorities, organizational culture, financial resources, and other concerns. This is a central point – process design is not simply laying out a sequence of steps and decisions, or defining a set of activities, which is what many people think of as “the process.” A well-designed business process represents the interplay of all six enablers, with the activities – “the work” – being just one, the “Process Design and Workflow” enabler. This is true whether the steps/tasks/activities are defined a priori, or whether they emerge on a case-by-case basis, as in Adaptive Case Management (ACM.) Either way, the enablers must be aligned to enable the process and its objectives. I think you could argue that having the appropriate enablers in place is even more important in an ACM environment because in the absence of a predefined process they can “steer” the emergent process in a desirable way. Sounds like a future Column… Disclaimer 1 – “No, I didn’t invent all this.” I want to be clear that I’m not claiming to have created this framework entirely on my own – it’s the product of ideas I got from other practitioners plus my own observations and experience. Some ideas surely came from the classic Rummler-Brache work Improving Performance, others from Tom Davenport's equally classic Process Innovation. In fact, I think that's where I first saw 2
the term “enabler” used. I think anyone who works with business process change long enough is likely to identify a similar set of factors as being important. To illustrate that, let’s bring Roger Burlton’s famous “Process Hexagon” into the mix. I first met Roger, now a good friend, in the late 1990s when we were both speaking at an Enterprise Architecture conference in Chicago. (We both live in the Vancouver area, but of course wouldn’t actually meet face-to-face there – now we almost expect to bump into each other unexpectedly in London, Chicago, Sydney, and most recently, Madrid.) By that time I'd already been using my framework for several years, was somewhat proud of it, and included it in one of my conference presentations. I was stunned, then, when I attended one of Rogers's sessions, and saw that he was using a very similar framework. Visually, his was quite different, laid out as hexagon, but the components were strikingly similar although not quite identical to mine. I think of the enablers as the pillars that support a process, Roger’s depiction, illustrated in Figure 2, conveys the idea that a well-rounded or balanced process addresses multiple facets. We met, discussed it, and concluded what I noted earlier – people working in the same field, with similar objectives, in similar (large) organizations, are likely to arrive at similar conclusions about what works. And neither of us would ever think we understood a process until we had looked at it through the lens of each enabler.
Figure 2: Roger Burlton’s famous hexagon
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Disclaimer 2 – no miracles It would be nice if the frameworks were totally prescriptive – “If this then do that.” The reality is that you still need a mix of experience and intuition, and probably some collaborators as well. I discussed this the other night with Sebastian Reiter (@SebastianReiter) a PhD candidate in Michael Rosemann’s BPM program at Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia. (Certainly one of the best programs in the world, and many would argue the best.) Sebastian pointed out that whether you are using a framework like the enablers or the Burlton Hexagon, or one of the frameworks that describe culture, there is no straight line connecting the framework to the appropriate action. He offered that frameworks all ultimately support the “observe, understand, act” cycle. The framework forces you to observe (look for) specific factors in an organized way – the understanding and action are still largely a function of experience and sense. Disclaimer 3 – it’s not all “culture” Most of the enablers in the framework have some but not an overly strong relationship to organizational culture. One, however – Motivation and Measurement – has a profound impact on behavior, and therefore on culture. We’ll spend more time looking at this particular enabler, but this is as good a time as any to introduce the entire framework.
Applying the enablers Think of the enablers as a list of topics to be considered when trying to understand why an existing process behaves the way it does, and when ensuring that a new process will behave as desired without unanticipated consequences. Two of them – “Process Design and Workflow” and “Information Systems” are “the usual suspects.” They are the factors that commonly get most or all of the attention, especially among inexperienced analysts and designers. In practice, the factors that make the most difference, especially in proportion to the attention they get, are “Motivation and Measurement,” “Human Resources and Organization,” and, to a lesser extent, “Policies and Rules.” Of these, “Motivation and Measurement” has the most impact on prevailing behavior (culture) and on process performance, so we’ll give that one a little more attention. Let’s look now at what each enabler represents, and, as space permits, at a negative (disabling) example. Figure 3 illustrates some of the questions to ask when assessing a process by enabler.
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Figure 3: Typical questions to ask when considering enablers in an as-is process
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Process Design and Workflow This enabler looks at the actual work design – the sequence or collection of activities (steps, decisions, and handoffs) carried out by the process’s participants between the triggering event and the final results. A participant could be a person, an organization, an information system, a piece of machinery, a holding area, or anything else that “holds the work.” This is what people generally think of as “the process.” Some of the things we look for include excessively sequential (“single-threaded”) processes, approval, review, and inform steps unnecessarily built in to the main flow, always “yo-yoing” back to a control point, excessively granular tasks split over too many performers leading to too many handoffs, batching rather than straight-through processing, and the like. A negative example: The “Settle Claim” process at an insurance company was highly sequential, involving multiple participants and many non-value added (NVA) tracking, checking, approval, and information steps. This was based on the original paper-based process from many years ago in which it was necessary that the process be purely sequential because only one participant at a time could hold the claim file. The new process perfectly duplicated the as-is flow using a Business Process Management System! This process, baked into the BPMS, reinforced the prevailing command and control culture and the belief that lower-level employees had to be constantly monitored. Information Systems This one is pretty well self-explanatory – it represents the application of information or communications technology to support a process. In years gone by it might have only been transaction processing systems and canned reports, while now it could include the full range of social media and analytics. The point, though, is the same – is technology supporting or interfering with the process? In some cases we’ve seen, it appears that the process exists to feed the technology. In a recent example, a retailer spent enormous sums (cajillions of dollars) on their unsuccessful ERP implementation. Examination of their processes revealed no customers, shelves, stores, trucks, distribution centres, or any other recognizable artifact of their business. Instead, the processes appeared to be devoted entirely to getting documents, one way or the other, into the ERP. This is such a vast topic it’s hard to know what to list as factors to watch for, but some possibilities include unavailable information, functionality that doesn’t mirror the structure of the work, dis-integrated applications and the associated switching back and forth, or a lack of support for collaborative work. Positive factors to look for include automating routine activities to free up capacity for higher-value work, elimination of intermediaries, resequencing or parallelization of steps that otherwise would happen in some strict sequence, replication of scarce expertise, and the use of technologies that people have come to expect in their non-working lives – social media, biometric interfaces, “bring your own device,” and so on. A negative example: Nursing staff in a hospital were “supported” by multiple, dis-integrated applications which were provided “free” by the vendors of various supplies and services. The IT group won accolades from management for implementing “free” systems, but nurses in one area we studied spent more than 50% of their work hours manually copying or “cut and pasting” data between applications. And this was at a time when the shortage of skilled nurses was a regular item in the local newspapers. Motivation and Measurement Motivation and measurement covers the explicit and implicit reward systems of the organization. Their concern is how people, organizations, and processes are measured and assessed, and the associated consequences — reward or punishment. Experience shows that people do what they are measured on and rewarded for, and if the measures do not align with the goals of a redesigned process, failure is virtually certain. Without question, the most common problem we see when analyzing business processes is that performance targets encourage people and 6
organizations to behave in ways that work against the goals of the process. An especially common reason for a redesign effort failing is carrying yesterday’s performance measures into tomorrow’s process. What we look for in particular is simple, one-dimensional “measures” or “counts” rather than more sophisticated “metrics” that balance multiple factors or measures. Carefully designed, motivation and measurement schemes encourage “good behavior” and support the desired culture. As often as not, however, they become what one client a decade ago termed “perverse incentives,” undermining good behavior and culture. Alfie Kohn’s 1999 book “Punished by Rewards” looks at this phenomenon in a variety of situations. What’s frustrating is how often this is entirely predictable, especially if you keep in mind famous dictums such as “what gets measured gets done” and “what you reward is what you get.” To use one of my favorite examples, if you motivate sales representatives with a cash bonus for orders placed in the last two weeks of a fiscal quarter, it shouldn’t take a rocket surgeon to figure out that you’ll end up with a glut of orders in those last two weeks, leading to a “pig in a python” effect that is sure to gum up the works. To paraphrase the famous line from Paul Newman’s Academy Award winning 1960s movie Cool Hand Luke, “what we have here is a failure to anticipate.” Simply taking five minutes to consider measures, and the associated consequences, is really all that it should take. Here are a few egregious examples, which will give you an idea what to look for. The general theme is that what is measured are tasks or intermediate steps, not the ultimate, desired outcome: •
There is no more universally recognized example than the call centre.. Simply put, if you punish Customer Service Representatives (CSRs) when their average call time gets above two minutes, you can be assured that it won’t, even if that means terminating a call in mid-sentence. (Yes, it happens.) In one case we found that CSRs were regularly accepting a call, then terminating it after one second (long enough for it to count in their average as “a call,”) often several times in a row. A great technique for bringing the average down!
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In an example we heard just this week, staff in a corrections agency were measured on how many released offenders they placed in programs, which were referred to as “starts.” The consequence was that they regularly pulled a person from one program, putting them in another, which counted as a “start.” The net effect was churn.
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An accounting group was expected to have “no unprocessed payables” on Friday afternoon, which meant that they released all the payables into the process whether they were ready or not, knowing that downstream checks would catch them and bounce them back.
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In a justice system, public defenders were paid not on completing a case but on the basis of each appearance, motion, or filing. Naturally, what resulted was a lot of appearances, motions, and filings, often requesting a delay of some form or other. In the same system, the Courtroom Facilities people were essentially rewarded for having the fewest courtrooms in operation, leading to huge expense and delay in the other parts of the system.
The examples go on and on, leading me to think that perhaps we should devote an entire future Column to ill-considered measures and rewards. Perhaps you’d like to contribute – this would be a great time for you to think about the worst examples you’ve seen, how they perverted the behaviors and therefore the culture that the enterprise really wanted, and share them. I’ll give you credit, or keep them anonymous, as you desire! In that spirit, at last fall’s Business Process Forum in Ft. Lauderdale, Roger Burlton and I facilitated a session we called “You Just Can’t Make This Stuff Up!” Anyone was free to share bizarre process experiences, many of which related to Motivation and Measurement. At the next BPF, we’ll be doing a similar session, but this year it will be called “What Were They Thinking?” Start collecting your examples today! Let’s close with a positive thought – a little recognition or a “thank you” goes a long way. If someone is demonstrating a behavior you want repeated or spread, acknowledge it. 7
Human Resources and Organization The human resource enabler covers the knowledge, skills, and experience (KSE) of the workforce, how they are recruited, trained, and assigned within the organization, and the design of the organization and individual jobs or roles. After inappropriate motivation and measurement, one of the most common problems we see is the wrong role (or the wrong person assigned to a role) having responsibility for activities they’re ill-suited for. Among the worst cases are when mindless cost-cutting and downsizing have resulted in expensive professional staff doing work that was formerly performed better, at lower cost, by clerical, administrative, or support staff. Another example – restructuring that leads to back-office staff suddenly having customer-contact responsibilities for which they have no natural disposition. Or training! Essentially, what we’re looking for here is primarily job (or role) definition that no longer matches the inherent structure of the work, perhaps splitting what should be a single role across multiple roles and therefore multiple people. In some sectors, such as automobile manufacturing, major gains have been made by reducing scores or even hundreds of job definitions into a much smaller number. The most common negative examples have already been mentioned – eliminating competent, lower cost support staff leaving more costly professionals to do a worse job. I’ll never forget being at a globally famous technology company that had eliminated virtually all support staff, and watching some unfortunate marketing people trying to replace the cartridge in a photocopier. The net result – a non-functioning copier, a ruined white shirt, and much lost time. Policies and Rules This includes the rules, policies, and guidelines established by the enterprise to guide or constrain business processes, and applicable laws and regulations. In practice, many processes include work and workflow to enforce policies or rules that are obsolete, contradictory, or no longer appropriate. Surprisingly often, they turn out not to be documented policy at all—they’re simply assumptions that have been perpetuated over time and codified in practice. We can picture someone, years ago, asking “Why?” and being told “Because it’s policy.” This is a good point to demonstrate that the enablers are interdependent, and it isn’t always even clear which enabler is at play. At a power utility, front-line customer service representatives (CSRs – here we go again) had been outsourced, although supervisors were still employees of the utility. The policy/rule was that certain types of action, especially serious ones like overriding disconnection orders in cases of hardship, could only be authorized by a supervisor. That meant a CSR would have to escalate a call where that was the issue to a supervisor. Fine, except that each escalation counted as a negative in the CSR’s performance score, so they were very reluctant to escalate. Especially in an unusually cold winter when there were many hardship cases. Do you see where this is going? The first the utility realized there was a problem when a witheringly critical story aired on a consumer affairs TV show highlighting the plight of an 86 year old widow whose power had been disconnected. In a cold snap. It isn’t entirely clear to me whether this should be counted as a problem in Human Resources (job boundaries,) Motivation and Measurement (how the CSRs were scored,) or Policies and Rules (restrictions on certain actions.) The point is that no one really looked at some fairly obvious factors (need to escalate, punishment for escalating) and saw what the outcome would be. Returning to our theme, the effect on culture was extremely negative – CSRs felt badly about their jobs and were sure that the company was fundamentally incompetent, which no doubt translated into how they dealt with their customers. Facilities (or other important factor) Facilities are the workplace design and physical infrastructure such as equipment, furnishings, machinery, lighting, and the general environment. Obviously, well-designed facilities are enablers of effectiveness, productivity, and well-being. Facilities may not be of concern in your process, and might be replaced by other, more relevant, enablers. In one recent assignment it was appropriate to treat “Finance” as the sixth enabler rather than Facilities. 8
Wrapping up I hope this Column demonstrates the value of explicitly considering each enabler of a business process, and the impact on culture, especially “Motivation and Measurement.” In a future Column we’ll look at how to use the enabler framework to assess the main characteristics of a new process, and thereby avoid “unanticipated consequences.” It’s proven to be an extremely valuable technique in practice, and I’m keen to share it with you.
“Where’s Alec?” As I write this, I’m finishing my “downunder” trip that has included stops in Hamilton, Auckland, Wellington, Melbourne, and Brisbane to run my “Advanced Business Process Management” workshop - http://bit.ly/vJUlzH. It’s been great, and I’ve met some wonderful people in the business process community. Now I’m in Sydney conducting a “Data Modelling” workshop http://bit.ly/tG8JKj. What’s next? •
Enterprise Data World in Atlanta – http://bit.ly/HaJAKK
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BA World in Calgary – http://bit.ly/HaJJxX
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IRMUK BPM and EA conference in London – http://bit.ly/z0OSGk
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On Oct 11 & 12, 2012 IRMUK will be hosting public offerings of our popular “Working With Business Processes” workshop in London – http://bit.ly/bno3ll
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It’s still in the works, but it looks like I’ll be back in New Zealand to conduct our “Advanced Business Process Management” workshop in November of 2012. I hope to see some of you there and compare notes on business processes and culture! From the Trenches Alec Sharp BPTrends Linkedin Discussion Group We created a BPTrends Discussion Group on Linkedin to allow our members, readers and friends to freely exchange ideas on a wide variety of BPM related topics. We encourage you to initiate a new discussion on this publication, or on other BPM related topics of interest to you, or to contribute to existing discussions. Go to Linkedin and join the BPTrends Discussion Group.
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