Three examples of new proccess strategy

There are three fundamental ways that companies can improve their
processes in the coming decade: (1) expand the scope of work managed by a
company to include customers, suppliers, and partners; (2) target the
increasing amount of knowledge work; and (3) reduce cycle times to
durations previously considered impossible (as I discussed in my last post).
So how do you do this? As science fiction writer William Gibson said, The
future is already here its just not very evenly distributed. This is to say
that you dont have to wait until the end of the decade for some
breakthrough technology to emerge; its already here, albeit in bits and
pieces.
Im collectively referring to these process improvement approaches as
Process Strategy 2.0. They stand on the shoulders of the methods of
Process Strategy 1.0: Lean, Six Sigma, and Business Reengineering. Lets
explore what Process Strategy 2.0 is all about:
1. To streamline customer experiences in end-to-end processes,
Process Strategy 2.0 will require aligned goals and supporting
systems to manage work between partners.
The first major trend I see is the shift to global, virtual, cross-organizational
teams of specialized entities that are knitted together to serve customers.
In a previous post I described how Forbes changed its article-writing process
to include a huge stable of outside authors publishing autonomously and
improved the reader experience by allowing them to leave comments.
To keep such a multiparty system from degenerating into chaos, virtual
process teams must have aligned goals and support systems. Both Forbes
and its external contributors (freelance journalists, authors, academics, and
topic experts) want to maximize readership, so Forbes publishes the page
view statistics for each piece and created an incentive payment program
based on the audience contributors attract. Forbes had to provide tools to
enable external contributors to easily publish text, photos, and video and
interact with readers and call out comments they want to highlight.

2. To manage the rising tide of knowledge work performed by a

younger generation of employees, Process Strategy 2.0 will depend
heavily on social collaboration tools.
A second major trend in the world of work is that low-skilled jobs are going
away due to automation, while all jobs are becoming more analytical as big
data provides workers with more information to make decisions.
To help manage the increased complexity of knowledge work, $20 billion
financial services provider Nationwide Insurance has been pioneering the use
of social collaboration tools. Chris Plescia, Marketing, Collaboration and
Corporate Internet Solutions BSA Leader, told me that they are moving from
an information push environment sending out lots of messages on
things workers need to know to a pull environment, where workers
search for information they need, get answers to questions, or access
services. One success story occurred when a front-line associate in a call
center posted online she didnt like a new process. The senior leader saw the
comment on their social platform and asked why not? People weighed in,
and then they changed the process. Engagement has been very high over
50% take some kind of action each month.
Getting a new social platform up and running in your organization isnt easy.
Participation rates are much lower at most other companies than at
Nationwide. Companies who just try to let it evolve, dont go after it with a
plan and with dedicated resources, and dont seek to create a culture around
collaboration will fail. At Nationwide the key success factors have been (1)
having senior leadership lead by example; (2) setting governance and
policies to ensure security of sensitive comments; and (3) using tools that
make collaboration easy and fun. Their collaborative space is designed to
look like an app store, mimicking the environment that people have come
to know on their mobile phones and iPads.
3. To speed operations and improvement, Process Strategy 2.0 will
make greater use of quick experiments and more agile management
processes.
The third major trend I see is the increasing need for speed in operations and
improvement. Accelerating changes in technology, competition, regulation,
and globalization demand that decisions get made faster at all levels.

Googles engineering culture is a good example of a management system

geared for speed. They like to run lots of experiments with new product or
feature ideas and let the market decide which ones deserve further
investment. It may look like chaos from the outside, but they arent afraid to
fail fast and learn, or scale up quickly if an idea shows merit. One technique
that helps early in new product or process development is to create a quick
mock-up of how it would work and show it around. And innovation is built
into jobs through 20% time projects engineers are expected to spend
20% of their time on projects that are creating and testing new ideas. The
effect is powerful this open technocracy means that workers at every level
feel they can have a significant impact.
Many organizations will have trouble adopting Googles fast approaches.
They rest on a cultural foundation of openness, analytical rigor, and respect
for workers. Workers are expected to not only do their work, but improve
their work. And it takes an ability and willingness to invest with a long time
horizon.
A revolutionary force over the last 30 years, information technology will
change the way organizations operate even more radically over the rest of
the decade. Process Strategy 2.0 will help organizations take a fresh look at
ways of including customers and suppliers to redesign work, introduce social
collaboration tools to support knowledge workers, and reengineer
management processes for speed.
Question: Over the rest of this decade, how do you think your
organization will change its methods and tools for process
improvement?