Business Process Blindness

Posted on febrero 22nd, 2011. Written by Mohammed El Hanini.

Within a given organization departments and units are boxes that exist only in relationship to one another and compose often a shared responsibilities environment.
Process-blindness is a frequent problem most organizations, both companies and public administrations, suffer from. It has to do with the employee seeing a process but without understanding the process of the whole.

Tendency to perceive “our” process as the most important part of the big puzzle is usually the main reason behind this. Or, at least, it’s a predominating feeling that our part of the process is the most important part “for us”.

Photogrph from jmpznz Creative Commons Lisenced

If your company is not encouraging you to be process-wise this doesn’t make it worst than the rest of companies. In fact, very few companies are concerned about their employees being process-aware. The moment you get onboard you might get some 10% of very generic information regarding the company’s activity and sector, its main business, etc., but then the focus is mainly on YOUR department business, that’s the knowledge you’re going to acquire. Moreoever you’re going to be an expert in your field and nobody is going to consider wether you’re aware of the company whole process or not.

The good news is that enterprises are developing a growing interest in solutions and systems integration, with the aim of reaching rapidly their markets and aligning their business systems with the customers and business partners. However when it comes to process interoperability we’re still in the beginning of the journey. Staff of major coporations speaking the same language and residing in the same location don’t seem to actually understand some cross-organizational processes, they’re experiencing real difficulties to get adapted to each other business needs.

Business process design, roll-out and optimization efforts are a meaningless investment if the staff has no clue on how things work.

Mohammed El Hanini

My name is Mohammed El Hanini and I read things through Chrome, write emails in Gmail and listen to music in Spotify. I'm an Apple admirer, I blogging lover, and a marketing and photography learner!