BPM Adoption – Organisational Factors that Influence Changeability

Foreword: The following post has been adapted from a post I wrote few years ago and for those interested in some of the more theoretical aspects, they can be found here.

I have worked in many diverse organisations in my career but over the past year I have been in some interesting organisational situations that has highlighted the fact that the human species has a very interesting way of adapting (or not) to Change.

I am reminded of a post that I wrote some time ago about how critical it is to consider the affects the introduction of Change (technological solution e.g. BPM or other) will have on the ‘status quo’ (real or perceived) of people in an organisation. In my experience, I have found that companies that are open to Change does not always mean they react well to it when it is imposed on them. Often this is due to type of culture in the organisation, in other cases it is just due to complacency.

In a dysfunctional organisation it is often the case that a naturally high capacity for adapting to Change exists. This is normally due to the nature of broken processes, lack of systems, miscommunication and indecisiveness. This capacity to adapt is not necessarily a good thing as it is used as a coping mechanism, and in most cases used as a way to justify organisational behaviour – “We have always done it this way, why change?” or “Nobody told me that there is a better way or that a process exists so we just did our best” or “That is just the way we work!”.

That said, the converse is also true. Some organisations believe they are running optimally because they have defined their processes and use some form of measurement criteria to try and enforce compliance. Although this is a step further in terms of Process Centric Maturity (process adoption and feedback via metrics) it will still not deliver an organisation that is responsive to Change. The key ingredients that are missing manifest in various forms but I have found the most common organisational aspects that are also required include:

• Leadership – A vision that is communicated to and understood by the organisation
• Governance – Clear roles and responsibilities for people across the organisation
• Applied Standards and Consistency – Not just processes that no one understands or follows but the ability to work in a way that contributes to the organisation and allows for improvement on an ongoing basis
• Personal Respect and Open Communication – Clear messages from Management as to what needs to be done and the ability for employees to challenge/clarify as required. Recognition of their contribution is also vital.

In conclusion, …

I have posted on many occasions on how an iterative approach to BPM development and implementation can deliver incremental business value. This approach is very tightly aligned with that of Change Management in an organisation and the adoption of BPM as a platform for delivering incremental Change.

In my experience, the challenge faced by both IT and Business is the age old one of “if there is no immediate problem to be solved, don’t try and fix something that is not broken”. No matter how tempting it is to introduce Change (for change sake), if the immediate problem and the benefits are not well understood an existing/potential project tends to turn into a cycle of continual recalculation and justification rather than a vehicle for ongoing delivering success that can be built upon in future.

That said, if there is however a clearly defined business problem that needs to be addressed, and it can be quantified in terms of ROI a BPM project or any other initiative both IT and Business are in a much better position to deliver success.