Tweet

Process Management Improves the Horizontal Flow

Guest post by: Jim Clemmer

Article Overview: A group of sailors were out in an old boat. The boat hit a rock and sprung a slow leak. The group began to fight over whose fault it was that they hit the rock. Then they argued over whose responsibility it was to fix the hole. Those on the starboard side shouted that those on the port side, where the hole was, should be responsible for fixing it. All the while, the boat filled with water and floundered in the increasing heavy seas. As the shouting and finger pointing grew, a large wave swamped the boat. Everyone drowned at sea.

Process Management Improves the Horizontal Flow

"Major breakthroughs in time to market, investment, piece cost, and quality come horizontally across the organization, not vertically through individual, isolated functions. And it is our business schools that have not taught how to manage process across functions." - Louis Lataif, Dean of the School of Management, Boston University quoted in, "MBA: Is the Traditional Model Doomed?", Harvard Business Review A group of sailors were out in an old boat. The boat hit a rock and sprung a slow leak. The group began to fight over whose fault it was that they hit the rock. Then they argued over whose responsibility it was to fix the hole. Those on the starboard side shouted that those on the port side, where the hole was, should be responsible for fixing it. All the while, the boat filled with water and floundered in the increasing heavy seas. As the shouting and finger pointing grew, a large wave swamped the boat. Everyone drowned at sea.

Our traditional functional or vertically managed organizations force the people in them to act like those foolish sailors. Individual departments such as accounting, production, sales, service, or development and areas such as branch or field offices, work to optimize their own performance. Goals, objectives, performance measurements, and career paths move up and down within the narrow walls of these functional chimneys or silos. Managers and their teams focus on doing their own jobs or segment of the production, delivery, or support process. Everyone focuses on a narrow piece of the organization while losing sight of the big picture.

Functionally managed organizations reduce organization performance levels, while increasing cycle times and costs by: (1) fostering an "us-versus-them" approach to communications and fighting for organizational resources, (2) leaving unmanaged gaps between departments which disrupt cross-functional work processes, (3) making improvements or changes in one department which hurts the effectiveness of other departments in the process, and (4) losing sight of customer/partner relationships and meeting everyone's needs. With a narrow focus on their own departments or functions, people in a vertically managed organization easily forget that they're all in the same boat.

While our organizations have been organized vertically, their operations depend on processes that flow horizontally. In the fifties, sixties, and seventies, that didn't matter. Expensive layers of inspectors, coordinators, expeditors, supervisors, and managers plugged and patched the leaks to keep their organizations afloat.

In the eighties, manufacturers were forced by their superior quality Japanese competitors to dramatically improve their production processes - or sink. Many manufacturers made huge gains in quality, productivity, cycle times, and cost reduction by rediscovering process improvement techniques developed in America by such pioneers as W. Edwards Deming and Joseph Juran.

By the late eighties, the same cost and service/quality pressures were building in service organizations (and on the administrative side of manufacturing companies). The problem was amplified by the Information Technology revolution that was quickly gathering speed. Managers soon found that buying expensive computer systems and sophisticated software was money down the drain if all they did was automate existing processes. It just meant that things got messed up faster.

The timing was perfect for Michael Hammer's Harvard Business Review article "Reengineering Work: Don't Automate, Obliterate", published in the July-August 1990 issue. A former MIT professor and Information Technology specialist, Hammer "had been frustrated by how fixated many organizations were on using information systems merely to automate the business processes they already had in place." The decade of reengineering, with all its helpful uses and harmful abuses began.

Related Articles
  What is love?
  4 Time Management Tips for Home-Based Business Opportunities
  Sell Information Products And Handling Payment Transactions
  Webinar Strategy That Causes Customers To Buy
  Sell Information Online With The 5 Benefits Of Autoresponders
  Start A Home Business Working With Your Spouse
  When I Say Theme, What Do I Meme?
  The Secrets To Help You Start Your Own Coaching Business Using Video Marketing
  Five Fabulous Features Of Online Web Conferencing
  How Mini Courses Work For An Internet Marketing Business
  The Newest Pet Rock Needs a Firm Foundation
  CMS - All the Embedded Features
  Increase Your Sales With Business Webinars
  Break The Code And Make Money On The Internet
  Blessings
  Online Business Opportunities And How To Promote Them Using Autoresponders
  Online Webinars - Events Worth Putting on Your Calendar
  Using The Funnel Concept To Sell Your Knowledge
  Start A Home-Based Business Successfully With Your Spouse
  Selling Information And How To Handle People Who Want It Free

Article Tags: leadership
Referred by: http://www.searchengineworkshops.com



Related Forum Posts
No B.S. Time Management - A great book I read on Time Management is No B.S. Time Management for Entrepreneurs by Dan Kennedy.
Improving Cash Flow - How do I improving Cash Flow? What the best way to improve it to another 100% growth YOY? Has anyone does this or achieved this using online marketing? Thanks, Roberts
Franchise of a popular call center - Hi All, I was planning to setup a franchise of a popular call center services company . They are giving several services to their customers like - knowledge management , workforce management , Business Process Automation etc. Now I need to know that from where and how I should start and who must be my targeting customers.
Which kind of industries are you interested in? - Ecological or E-business or Investment or Finance or Management or Non-Profit or Retailer or others.
Re: Improving Cash Flow - Thanks for your information. guide on how to avoid the problems of over trading. <-- Where is this guide? Any URL? guide on debt factoring and invoice discounting: the basics. <-- Where is this guide? Any URL? I just want to learn more about this. I am also looking for a good article on: What exactly is Cash Flow? Ways to improve cash flow at individual level and organizational level? I think it is a problem of thinking and mind sets problem. If we can change the way of spending, we can have more Cash. Robert


Share this article with your friends. Fund someone's dream.

Leave a comment below or share on the left and you'll help support entrepreneurs in Africa through our partnership with Kiva. Over $50,000 raised and counting - Please keep sharing! Learn more.

Newsletter

Get advice & tips from famous business
owners, new articles by entrepreneur
experts, my latest website updates, &
special sneak peaks at what's to come!

Name:
Email:

Popular Articles

SEO Gurus, Software and Ebooks

Build Corporate Credit for Your Small Business

Sales is a Flawed Model

Suggestions

Email us your ideas on how to make our
website more valuable! Thank you Sharon
from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for
your suggestions to make the newsletter
look like the website and profile younger
entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez.