Business of BPM

The Other BPM Failures

For some reason, I have seen the same article misquoted by multiple people.  The other BPM (Business Performance Management) was mentioned as failing at 3/4 of firms in IT Week.  Don't be fooled.   

http://www.itweek.co.uk/itweek/news/2190482/firms-dissatisfied-bpm

The Art of Ware

I was just skimming a story from Guy Kawasaki's blog about The Art of 'Ware by Bruce Webster.  I was a little skeptic, but Guy always has great instincts.  I read a few of the chapters in the book and think you would enjoy it.  Especially if you work with or at a software company. 

Here is some text from the home page about The Art of 'Ware...

Back in the early 1990s, I [Bruce Webster] wrote and published The Art of ‘Ware (M&T Books, 1995), a reinterpretation of Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, a 6th century BC treatise on conflict and warfare. My reinterpretation of Sun Tzu’s maxims applied to developing and marketing information technology products, most particularly software. Here’s an example:

• Sun Tzu (Chapter 2, ‘Waging War’, 1910 Lionel Giles translation): Now, when your weapons are dulled, your ardor damped, your strength exhausted and your treasure spent, other chieftains will spring up to take advantage of your extremity. Then no man, however wise, will be able to avert the consequences that must ensue.
• The Art of ‘Ware (Chapter 2, ‘Supporting Development’, 1995 edition): When your developers are burned out, your technology aging, your resources diminished, and your advantages gone, then others will take advantage of your weaknesses and cut into your market. Even expensive consultants and new CEOs won’t be able to turn things around.

Generation Y Summary...for BPM

"They're ambitious, they're demanding and they question everything, so if there isn't a good reason for that long commute or late night, don't expect them to do it. When it comes to loyalty, the companies they work for are last on their list - behind their families, their friends, their communities, their co-workers and, of course, themselves."

This is from a Fortune article titled "Attracting the twentysomthing worker" by Nadira Hira from May 15, 2007.  Here are a few of the highlights from the article...then I will tie it back to BPM and why you care.

• Someone born between 1977 and 1995
• 79.8M of them (versus 78.5M Boomers)
• "Most high-maintenance workforce in history" (see RainmakerThinking for more)
• They go to the gym.
• Over 1/3 have tatoos.
• 30% have piercings (other than in their ears).
• Accustomed to diversity.
• Electronic.
• Not just willing to work long hours for the sake of facetime.
• Communicate different ways (e.g., text messaging).
• Live at home after college.
• Involve their parents in the decision of the job more.

So why do you care as you think about BPM?

1. You have to hire them to work on your project.  Like Myers-Briggs, understanding personality, motivation, and interests helps you build a high-performance team.
2. They will be part of your process so you need to think about how they experience the job and how they will interact with technology.  Your solution is for the future not necessarily for the past.
3. This should make you think about generational differences - X, Y, Boomers.  All of this is important when you facilitate an event to flush out the process.
4. They may someday be your boss.  (It is an interesting experience the first time you realize you are old enough to have a boss younger than you and more successful than you.) 
5. They will get BPMS and wonder why you use paper and don't have integrated systems today.  They can help drive change.

APS Benchmarking Study on BPM

The Arizona Public Service Company conducted a BPM study.  I found this on ABPMP and thought some of the findings were insightful. 

What was the call to action?

• Customer satisfaction / service
• Legacy system maintenance / shift of system responsibility to business
• Costs of shipping paper
• Reduce processing costs
• Flexibility

When did you implement BPM? - 68% within the past 2 years.

What was the focus of BPM? (of 28 responses)

• 12 operations
• 5 shared services
• 4 IS
• 3 total company
• 2 marketing
• 2 other

84% said they used a methodology.

• 8 of 27 said they used Lean or Six Sigma
• 13 of 27 used an in-house methodology

12 of 23 responses said they used dedicated internal resources.

Only 4 of the 21 respondents said they had a dedicated BPM group.

There were several more that were more qualitative.  Overall, I think it is a good quick scan of the soem section of the market.  I am not sure of who responded, but I am going to reach out to the author and ask him to comment.

Interested in Music (non-BPM)

One of the more interesting partners at E&Y back in the dotcom days was our lead Internet partner named Yobie Benjamin.  I only got to make one sales call with him, but he was great.  As a VC, partner, and developer, he represented much of what clients wanted at that time.  Think about what GE was doing with their "destroymybusiness.com" initiatives (i.e., this was when they challenged people to think about how a start-up could erode their marketshare or profit). 

I got a note from Yobie this morning through LinkedIn and thought I would pass it along...

Over the past few weeks, I've been coding up a storm to build a "widget" that can potentially change the way music is distributed. Well, I am ready to show it and test it in the real world. I want to find as many bugs and hear feature improvements that are relevant to labels and bands. Development at web 2.0 speed!!!

http://music.goodstorm.com

Although these are initially non-paid positions, I am looking for active testers (especially working musicians and serious music fans with blogs and mySpace pages) to test our music widget.

A few active testers may get hired on as part of GoodStorm's upcoming street team. We are trying to identify a geographically dispersed team of musicians and music fanatics to help test out our new website.

Active testers will be given invites to our rollout event on June 12 in NYC and SF.

The test period is short and sweet as we have a hard date on rolling out our technology June 12. 2007. We are going on accelerated testing because we're doing a massive global rollout on June 12 with Amnesty International. For more information, please go to http://instantkarma.org

Company: GoodStorm.com
Job Title: Serious Beta Testers Needed (May Lead To Paid Contract Positions)
Description: Active beta testers needed for accelerated test period. Active testers may be recruited as part of a permanent "street team" to help promote GoodStorm's MixTape technology. There will be 7 positions for street team members in key cities.

Working musicians or serious music fans are strongly preferred. Those with personal blogs and mySpace pages will be given priority.

People with formal QA experience also considered.

If you're interested, please sign up at music.goodstorm.com or send email to betatest {at} goodstorm [dot] com.

The McKinsey Way

You can certainly never go wrong looking at McKinsey.  Their consultants are usually very top notch and their process of thinking and root cause analysis is great.  Although this post is more about how you analyze a problem (i.e., business process innovation), it also makes a point about how important process and methodology is.  The only way of delivering consistent, high-quality advice worldwide is to have a process of training and consulting that leverages smart people and delivers them to clients.

(Never mind the fact that McKinsey once told me that they only interview people with a 4.0 or people with a 3.8 and above from a top 5 business school.  I didn't fit the bill, but I have several good friends who were there.  I have lots of respect for them.)

The McKinsey Way is actually a book so you can see some insight into the company.  I have read the book and recommend it.  Rather than re-type all my notes, I found comments about the book at MeansBusiness and on blog called Brian Groth's Life at Microsoft and looked at notes on MECE (mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive) from a book review on The McKinsey Mind.

My old boss who worked for McKinsey was a genius at asking the probing questions.  She new how to get to root cause better than anyone I worked for.  This is essential is diagnosing any problem not least of which are process problems.  (Since I assume you only look at BPM to drive value where you have some type of problem.)

So MECE, as Brian states in his blog, it suggests you should do the following:

1. Identify the problem using a mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive framework and then map the problem out using some type of logic tree (see example).
2. Create a hypothesis (or hypotheses) about the solution...this drives your analysis.
3. Analyze the data...remember that the only thing that is right is data (assuming some data integrity).
4. Repeat steps 3 & 4 until you find a fact-based solution that makes sense.

  From the book, some of the other key points are:

1. "The most brilliant solution, backed up by libraries of data and promising billions in extra profits, is useless if your client or business can't implement it."
2. "Most business problems resemble each other more than they differ."
3. "If you get your facts together and do you analyses, the solution will come to you."
4. "If you keep your eyes peeled for examples of 80/20 in your business, you will come up with ways to improve it."
5. "Know your solution so thoroughly that you can explain it clearly and precisely to your client in 30 seconds."
6. "It's much better to get to first base consistently than to try to hit a home run and strike out 9 times out of 10."
7. "Just as you shouldn't accept I have no idea from others, so you shouldn't accept it from yourself, or expect others to accept it from you. This is the flip side of I don't know."
8. "When you're picking people's brains, ask questions and then let them do the talking. Keep the interview on track by breaking in when necessary."

Crazy Bosses

I am not sure if you read Stanley Bing from Fortune.  He has some great articles.  I especially like some of his new stuff.  He has a new book out called Crazy Bosses and has readers submitting online stories about some of their craziest.  It made me think about a few of the crazy things I have seen bosses (not all mine) do.  It also made me think about the fact that in three jobs over 10 years I have had 18 bosses.  I think once I actually had the same boss for 12 months.

It is hard to build that consistency and approach when the organizational sands are constant.  (All the more reason for a process infrastructure that institutionalizes and embeds learning into a process.)

So, what are some of the more interesting things I have seen:

1. The SVP of Operations assigning a team of VPs and Directors to work on a project for months only to reveal that the only reason he did it was because the CIO wouldn't approve his project for workflow automation unless he co-sponsored this strategy initiative.  (The CIO left so he revealed this fact and disbanded the team.)
2. A VP who would not let her team start meetings or attend a dinner event at a conference until she was there...even though she was chronically 15-30 minutes late. 
3. A boss (of mine) who actually lived in another country and during the three months I worked for him never actually talked to me.  He would tell my old boss things which I would hear days later.
4. One of the senior officers of a company coming in to my office and yelling at me (even throwing stuff at me) because I had him listed as optional for a meeting via Outlook.  (Never mind the fact that I had invited his boss and subsequently forwarded the invitation to him in which case it automatically shows him as optional.)
5. After facilitating a meeting of senior executives which was sponsored by two of them, I was asked to put together meeting minutes.  One of them asked me to distribute them while another asked me not to.  The one SVP was my boss' boss.  I asked her again and told her what her peer had said.  I sent them out and within minutes had the other SVP in my office very upset.  She never stepped in and defended her decision.
6. A partner who used to come in every Friday, close the door to the project manager's office, and yell at her for about 30 minutes.  You never heard anything else from him.
7. A senior manager who commuted to a project and just stayed there for nine months.  He had no life.  Six months after the project ended, he tried to submit all his expenses even though the engagement was long over.  (Not to mention I don't understand why he floated them for so long.)

I could go on, but that is it for now.  Make sure to share your stories with Stanley at his site.

5 Patterns of Extraordinary Careers

At Express Scripts, all of us on the leadership team (top 1.5%) were given the book The 5 Patterns of Extraordinary Careers.  It was a good book with several relevant tips especially for someone in the BPM space that is likely playing the role of change agent or somone whose career might include an objective of becoming the Chief Process Officer or Chief Innovation Officer. 

From the website, I have pulled in the 5 Patterns.  They also have an online quiz which gives you feedback on whether you are on your way to an extraordinary career. 

1. Understand the Value of You
People with extraordinary careers understand how value is created in the workplace, and translate that knowledge into action, building their personal value over each phase of their careers.

2. Practice Benevolent Leadership
People with extraordinary careers do not claw their way to the top, they are carried there.

3. Overcome the Permission Paradox
People with extraordinary careers overcome one of the great Catch-22s of business: you can't get the job without experience and you can't get the experience without the job.

4. Differentiate Using the 20/80 Principle of Performance
People with extraordinary careers do their defined jobs exceptionally well but don't stop there. They storm past pre-determined objectives to create breakthrough ideas and deliver unexpected impact.

5. Find the Right Fit (Strengths, Passions & People)
People with extraordinary careers make decisions with the long-term in mind.  They willfully migrate towards positions that fit their natural strengths and passions and where they can work with people they like and respect.

No Creativity in China

I was reading the most recent Fast Company this afternoon.  It has a good article about the emerging creative sector within the Chinese business community.  The only thing that soured me was their assumption that anyone was stupid enough to think that all China could produce was widgets.

In this multi-cultural world, I hope all of us are open enough to realize that diversity has a huge benefit which is called innovation.  A country with 1B people (even with strong government control) is going to produce all kinds of people that will eventually transform the world we live in. 

Creative Rigor and Planned Spontaneity

I had been debating starting a second (or technically third) blog.  As you may already know, BPM Enterprise is another site which I originally posted blogs on, but now they have been kind enough to simply repost my blogs.  This gets me access to about 5,000 people which is great.

The newest blog was going to be more around leadership and business in general.  For years, I have used two expressions to synthesize my approach to business.

1. Creative Rigor - This is my blend of right and left brain thinking.  I was classically trained as an architect (buildings not systems).  My biggest takeaways from architecture were (a) how to listen and capture requirements and (b) the fact that there is no right answer only an optimal answer.  When I blend this with my pre-disposition to math and my MBA training, I find that I approach problem solving very different than others.
2. Planned Spontaneity - This is my approach to consulting.  You have to be 2-3 steps ahead of your client and able to whiteboard out something real-time.  Ideally, you have already thought through the idea beforehand to understand the pros and cons.  Not easy, but it works great when you are ready.

So, I am going to start adding some of my musings and thought around business here.  I hope to someday publish them in a book, but that may be a ways off unless I can use this medium to capture and begin synthesizing the concepts.