Most process led approaches seem to assume that control is an attribute of the process. Our view is that this is upside down - control needs to be detached and used to independently orchestrate the process. The process is simply an enabler for the control function (at Idiom we use the term ‘decision model’ to describe the logic behind the control function).

It is interesting to contemplate which bit (process or control) most reflects the corporate intent. My money is on the control part – the process is usually alike across all organizations in the same domain, whereas the decisioning is always personal to the organization.

Interesting article. Thanks and regards, Mark

Nobody was talking about Six Sigma here nor had it in mind.

Guess you missed the window

Quotes from the press:

Six Sigma: So Yesterday?
In an innovation economy, it’s no longer a cure-all
JUNE 11, 2007 Bloomberg Businessweek

Austed Home Depot CEO Robert Nardelli was devoted to Six Sigma. … Profitability soared, but worker morale drooped, and so did consumer sentiment. Home Depot dropped from first to worst among major retailers on the American Customer Satisfaction Index in 2005. Now Nardelli’s successor, Frank Blake is dialing back on the Six Sigma. … The story unfolding at Home Depot echoes closely what’s happening at 3M after James McNerney’s reign. At Young & Rubicam, where GE board member Ann Fudge flamed out as CEO after she tried to sell ad execs on Six Sigma.

At Raytheon, Robert Carter as a Six Sigma expert, acknowledges the “define, measure, analyze, improve, control” mind-set doesn’t entirely gel with the fuzzy front-end of invention. When an idea starts germinating, Carter says, “you don’t want to overanalyze it.”

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Bloomberg Businessweek June 11th, 2007
At 3M, A Struggle Between Efficiency And Creativity
How CEO George Buckley is managing the yin and yang of discipline and imagination
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_24/b4038406.htm

“Invention is by its very nature a disorderly process,” says current 3M CEO George Buckley. “You can’t put a Six Sigma process into that area and say, well, I’m getting behind on invention, so I’m going to schedule myself for three good ideas on Wednesday and two on Friday. That’s not how creativity works.”

“If you take over a company that’s been living on innovation, clearly you can squeeze costs out,” says Charles O’Reilly, a Stanford Graduate School of Business management professor. “The question is, what’s the long-term damage to the company?”

I agree with You. My remark isn’t related with situations in wich the process management does not replase the functional management. But an appliance of BPM-systems usually results in increasing the process part of management. Even when employees expect from BPM-system help only they automatically give control growing in additional. Information that was only accessed for them before becames to be accessed for their managers too. And if executers have any reasons for hidding something they may resist against using the BPM system. IMHO, when managers notice something like that they have to be assertive in growing a control.

Using any computer-aided system may cause to growing a contlol and bringing a help for executers at the same time. BPM-systems are not exclusions. I think that only using BPM systems for help executers considerably cutting down their scope. Edvard Deming said that 98% of the improvements depended on top managers and on busines system and only 2% on employees. If we want to improve the system we have to analyze processes in details. We have to bring to light reasons of losing production time. It can’t be done without growing a control.

Your input is much appreciated here.

But what do you mean by the process management replacing the functional management? I’d speak only about addition, not replacement. Or better as Geary Rummler wrote, there is no such thing as process management separate from “normal” management. It’s another aspect or dimension.

Regarding your argument about the middle managers - it’s a good point but again, instead of taking control from them let’s better help them in gaining the control over the things they are supposed to control but do not in reality.

On the other hand in some situations it may require growing a control.
When the functional management replaces by the process management some of the functional manegers loses a part of their previous control. The management changes bring consequences in wich executers carry out the requirements of the process logic but not the managers’s orders. It may entail the resistance of middle management. But it may need for top manegement because it decrases cost of management. And in such situations the top managers have to be assertive if they want improve business efficiency.

P.S.Sorry for my english