Joe's friend, Dave, makes a good point: The purpose of a process is to
produce a desired result. If the process fails to do this -- especially in
a business, government, religious, or military environment -- then the
usefulness of the process must be questioned.
While I was at my previous place of employment I was amazed at how often
people celebrated how well they followed various processes, despite the
fact that the companies profitability was in a downward spiral. When the
companies revenue droped from $2.2 billion in to $1.5 in a year I began to
wonder what everyone was celebrating! I especially became concerned when I
had to lose money to exercise my stock options!
What I found interesting is that much of our business success had to do
with the knowledge employees possessed. This, I think, is where the
breakdown occured: Our business processes failed to provide a way for the
entire organization to capture, store, and, when necessary, recall the
knowledge possessed by individuals.
You could walk down the hallways and hear conversations that would open
your mind to possibilities never before imagined. And then the people
would walk back into their offices, sit down, and start "working." The
cafeteria was filled with conversations that would have stimulated
Novell's business, and created a competitive edge, but there were no
processes to capture that knowledge.
I remember when we got a new CEO last spring, "The halls are bleeding with
knowledge, and no one is capturing it." Bingo!
The problem, here is one of definition: How do we define work? If I'm
working I'm doing _________. Fill in the blank. Some would write "coding"
as in developing software. Others might say "taking calls," as in customer
support. But if I were to write in "capturing and storing knowledge,"
people would give me a blank stare and say, "Get a real job!"
As Quality Manager I found it amazing that my Senior VP claimed to have
insituted a "continuous improvement" program, but nothing about that
program emphasized the importance of learning or the role of knowledge in
our business success. When I would bring up, in meetings, that our
processes needed to address the importance of learning and knowledge
management, people would nod their heads and move on to the next agenda
item.
The work I was doing, before I was laid off, was an attempt to define our
processes in such a way that learning and knowledge management were built
into everything we did. That was, to me, the leverage point. If we could
have only acted on the knowledge possessed within the organization --
instead of just on the work hours people put in -- then we could have
continued to preserve and even augment our leadership position in the
industry.
Celebrate a process? Sure, if it produces the desired result. If it
doesn't, modify it, improve it, measure it, and be honest about it. I find
no practical reason to celebrate a process that produces results that
actually diminish my success.
Isn't learning a result oriented activity? Don't we get an incredible
feeling of achievement when we are able to produce a desired result?
That's the point to a process: To produce a result. And that is where we
are able to build the self-esteem of individuals within our organizations:
By helping them achieve meaning and necessary results.
Just for the record, however, I enjoyed Joe's message. I've spent a couple
of days thinking about it. And what I've written here presents just one
side of my feelings and thoughts. I just don't have the time or the space
to explain all my feelings on this fascinating topic.
-- Benjamin B. Compton bcompton@enol.com http://www.enol.com/~bcomptonLearning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>