(This post adds to proposed concept of management competence stack.)

When considering a new methodology or concept for your company it’s a good idea to figure out which level of competence stack it belongs to and what low-level competencies it requires. But besides that it’s also useful to determine which control channel it supports: direct (action) or reverse (feedback)?

Action and feedback are notions from the control theory. Controller affects the process through the action channel and receives a response through the feedback channel. Controler needs both for normal operation:

For example, EPM (Enterprise Performance Management), BI (Business Intelligence) and BSC (Balanced Score Card) are all useful but they provide only the feedback channel. By contrast, BPM provides both action and feedback - the latter via BAM (Business Activity Monitoring).

When we were kids we liked to look into a car window to find out the maximum speed number at the speedometer - this is how we determined the coolness of the car. Now I realize that the dashboard isn’t the main thing neither the engine - powerfull brakes, stiff chassis, sensitive and informative steering are.

BI and BSC are just dashboard instruments - you must have BPM to make the company make a maneuver. On the other hand, BPM belongs to the second and BSC to the third layer of the stack. Therefore BPM/BAM combination with BSC should be a good idea.