building a process culture understanding the politics of improvement and how to build a...

Building a Process Culture

Understanding the politics of improvement

and how to build a process-oriented culture

Status of Organizational Improvement Efforts

The failure rate for total quality management interventions is upward of 75 %. 1

Of quality initiatives in place for more than 2 years, as many as 2/3 have failed. 2

Surveys show that up to two-thirds of American managers think that TQM has failed in their companies. 3

Evidence suggests that only about 20 % of the TQM programs in the U.S. and Europe have achieved “significant” or even “tangible” improvements in quality, productivity, competitiveness, or financial returns. 4

BA 553: Business Process Management 2

1 Spector and Beer, “Beyond TQM Programmes,” Journal of Organizational Change Management, Vol. 7, No. 2, 1994, pgs. 63 - 70.

2 Doyle, Kevin, “Who’s Killing Total Quality?,” Incentive, August 1992, pgs. 12 - 19.

3 Higginson and Waxler, “Communication, Commitment and Corporate Culture: The Foundation for TQM and Reengineering,” Industrial Management, November/December 1994, pgs. 4 - 7.

4 Harari, Oren, “Ten Reasons Why TQM Doesn’t Work” Management Review, January 1993.


Why Improvement Fails

A failure to recognize that to achieve successful improvement, the organization needs to develop a culture supportive of change

A lack of knowledge of how to plan, lead, and implement improvement in a systematic manner

A failure to include in the improvement plan activities that facilitate learning the capabilities needed for process management

Results from a survey of senior executives in Fortune 500 companies showed failed improvement initiatives were due to:

A lack of improvements in teamwork

A lack of alignment between organizational strategy and culture

Employee resistance to doing things in new ways


Resistance to Change

“It is the nature of man as he grows older to protect against change, particularly change for the better.” John Steinbeck

“I can’t be bothered by any crazy salesman - I’ve got a battle to fight!”


Why Employees Resist Change

Fear that change may result in them losing their jobs

Anxiety about their ability to learn new ways of working and to master new technologies

Uncertainty on what the change will achieve, and whether it is really worthwhile

Concern about how the change may influence the relationships they value within the company


The Impact of Front-Line Employees on Improvement Success

Achieving improvement involves improving the processes used to get work done

Front-line employees are the ones who must implement the improved processes

Therefore, the success of any organizational improvement effort depends greatly on the support and involvement of front-line employees

This involvement requires the support of the organization’s culture and systems

The organization’s culture and systems are the responsibility of management

Factors Influencing Successful Change

In poll after poll, technologies like robotics and computer-integrated manufacturing get low marks as quality improvement drivers, while relatively simple measures such as “more employee involvement” and “cross-functional teams” rank at the top of CEO priority. 1

In a survey of 582 CEOs conducted by “Electronic Business” and Ernst & Young, 76% of those surveyed believed that employee involvement was an effective method for improving quality. 2

Research based upon lessons learned from studying five Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award Winners showed that the success of a total quality effort is largely based on the degree to which the organization’s culture supports total quality. 3


1 Higginson and Waxler, Ibid

2 Higginson and Waxler, Ibid.

3 Sirota, et. al., “Breaking Through the Cultural Wall,” Journal for Quality and Participation, March 1994, pgs. 74 - 83.


“I won’t support it if my boss doesn’t …”

Survival needs, particularly in fear-based organizations, cause employees to be reluctant to participate in improvement efforts if they believe their supervisors are not supportive of such efforts

Where do employee beliefs about supervisor attitudes come from?

They are based upon experience, as employees observe the reactions of middle managers to daily events in the organization

For example, when improvement meetings are scheduled, a middle manager may continually find reasons why employees cannot be released to participate

Employees observe this behavior over time and conclude that their manager is not supportive of the improvement effort


The Impact of Middle Managers on Improvement Success

The attitudes and behaviors of senior management impact the attitudes and behaviors of middle managers

In any organization, middle managers have the most contact with front-line employees, and so have the greatest impact on them

Therefore, the attitudes and behaviors of middle managers towards formal improvement initiatives impact those of front-line employees

Seniormanagement

attitudes

Seniormanagement

behaviors

Middlemanagement

attitudes

Middlemanagement

behaviors

Front-lineemployeeattitudes

Front-lineemployeebehaviors

Performance


Support for Improvement Efforts Organizational improvement requires the support of ALL employees,

especially front-line workers, because they use the processes to do their work, and so are best able to identify improvements and implement the changes needed. 1

Senior managers often support improvement efforts because they see the financial need. This is sometimes referred to as a “burning platform.” 2

Front-line workers often support improvement efforts because they believe it will give them a voice to help their jobs function better, for example, by eliminating “red tape.”

However, middle managers often resist improvement efforts because they don’t see a role for themselves in the improved organization, and they fear losing power. This concern has a basis in reality, as over the past few decades there have been many efforts to “flatten the organization,” eliminating middle management roles. 3

1 Deming, W. Edwards (1986), Out of the Crisis, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.

2 Peck, W. and W. Casey (2002), “Convincing employees to embrace change is no easy feat,” Denver Business Journal, November 29 edition.

3 Anjard, Ronald (1998), “Total quality management: key concepts,” Work Study, Vol. 47 No. 7, pp. 238-247.


Middle Managers: The Balancing Act

The middle management squeeze: balancing the needs and concerns of senior management and front-line workers

Middle Management

Top Management

Pressures to achieve bottom-lineresults

Front-line Workers

Ideas forimprovement, concerns, problems

Gaining the Involvement of Senior Management

Addressing the concerns of senior management: Show them that improvement projects can help the bottom line

Determine the appropriate level of involvement by them in the project. In some cases, senior managers may want to keep their distance from the project so they don’t become associated with a failed effort. This is okay

Involvement by senior management: Have them define the process area to be improved

Ask them to define the boundaries for the improvement team (what are the boundaries of the process, what is our budget, etc.)

Get some agreement from them on the support you and your team need to be successful in improvement. Examples include: agreeing to no layoffs during the project, or after the project as a result

of improvements caused by the project giving the team the necessary time to do the project right (our

experience indicates one day per week is about right)


Gaining the Involvement of Workers

Addressing the concerns of workers:

Explain that they will really have an active role in improvement

Help them believe that their ideas will be listened to

Tell them about management’s commitment to no layoffs during the project or as a result of improvement efforts

Show them how improvement will benefit them

Involvement by workers:

Have them agree to be at the meetings

Let them know that this process will take about one day per week, and that other workers may need to put in more effort while they are in team meetings



Addressing the Middle Management Squeeze

In the long term, BPM will reduce the middle management squeeze, as it involves employees in implementing improvements to make the process more efficient

In the short term, expectations need to be managed. There needs to be a recognition that building long-term capability may reduce short-term performance, but it is worth the investment

All employees, from senior management to employees, have anxiety about the potential benefit of change and how it will affect them

Recognizing, developing, and implementing a strategy for getting organization-wide support for implementing BPM is essential if the adoption of BPM is to be successful


Research Into Middle Managers and Improvement There is much discussion in the literature on the importance of

middle managers to the success of organizational improvement efforts. 1

There is also much discussion of the fact that middle managers often resist such improvement efforts. “The reality often observed is that managers act in ways that disempower employees and undermine opportunities for positive, contributive learning.” 2

There is also much written on why they resist, including lack of belief in senior management’s commitment (“program of the month”), lack of a role in the new organization, and conflicting priorities between improvement efforts and daily work

So where does all this lead?

1 Owen, Keith, Ron Mundy, Will Guild and Robert Guild (2001), “Creating and sustaining the high performance organization,” Managing Service Quality, Vol. 11 No. 1, pp. 10-21.

2 Perren, Lew and David Megginson (1996), “Resistance to change as a positive force: its dynamics and issues for management development,” Career Development International, Vol. 1 No. 4, pp. 24-28.


The Failure Process

1) Senior management operates in a traditional fashion, establishing a “command and control” culture

2) Middle management resistance to change impacts employee attitudes

3) Employee resistance to change blocks learning and slows the transition to BPM

4) Organizations fail to develop the capabilities needed for BPM

5) Resistance combined with lack of capabilities result in the potential of BPM not being achieved

6) Managers view the lack of progress as a justification to revert to the command and control culture they are used to

7) Repeat


What is the pathway to success?

The organization’s culture must be shifted to be more supportive of learning and improvement

One way to get started is to shift the behaviors, actions, and attitudes of all employees

Question:

How do behaviors, actions, attitudes, norms and values change?

Answer:

By learning from new experiences that enable us to change our perceptions of “what works best” to achieve desired goals


How People Learn

Research suggests that existing memories cannot be overwhelmed or eliminated through an act of will or even a day spent in a training class

Rather, a new model and its underlying theory must be understood and then experimented with

We must gain enough successful experience with a new model to create new memories to overlay the old. These experiences are the foundation of learning

Memory’s Voice (1992), Alkon, D. L., M.D., HarperCollins, Canda.


Culture Transformation Process

Desired culture

Leaders change their actions, demonstrate the desired behavior

Develop new company vision with employee participation

Establish a shared vision of the desired or “to be” character

Foster behaviors and actions consistent with desired character

Influence attitudes

Establish norms and values that align with “to be” character

As in slide 9, behaviors influence attitudes

Modify policies and procedures to align with desired culture


A Process-Oriented Culture

What does it look like?

An emphasis on process as opposed to hierarchies, a process-oriented way of thinking

A cross-functional culture focused on the customer rather than the boss

An emphasis on teamwork and personal accountability

Measures aligned with processes rather than simply outcomes (covered in session 7)

Why develop a process culture?

Aligns employees around delivering value to customers

How can a process live up to its potential if the company measures performance as it has always done and rewards people for focusing on narrow, functional goals?1

1 Hammer, M. (2007), “The Process Audit”, Harvard Business Review, Vol. 85 Issue 4, pp. 111-123.

The Importance of Culture to BPM

Remember this slide from session 2? It explains the problem of trying to operate efficient and effective processes in an organization that is managed with a traditional culture.


Direction of ControlCEO

Dept. 1 Dept. 2 Dept. 3 Dept. 4

Functional Hierarchy

Direction of Process Flow


How to Achieve a Process-Oriented Culture

The focus on processes must be pervasive, permeating all aspects of the organization, including:

Strategy: plans for achieving many of the organization’s strategic objectives rely on the implementation of process changes

Information systems: information systems help cross-functional processes work smoothly rather than simply support departments (to be discussed further in session 12)

Roles and responsibilities: managers oversee processes instead of activities and develop people rather than supervise them, and employees work in self-directed process teams (covered in session 8)

Decision-making: decisions are made by front line personnel (and managers provide the support and information needed to accomplish this)

Training: training for employees is process-based

Reward and recognition systems: reward systems are focused on processes as well as outcomes

Hammer, M. (2007), “The Process Audit”, Harvard Business Review, Vol. 85 Issue 4, pp. 111-123.


How a Culture Shift Impacts Performance Increases personal responsibility, involvement and satisfaction Facilitates the learning needed to improve competencies and

develop new products and services Increases the ability of employees who are closest to a problem to

use their best judgment in resolving it Establishes an environment where information is made freely

available to those who need it Motivates people to use their initiative and creativity to achieve the

best they can achieve Creates a culture in which people can more effectively adapt to

changing circumstances Provides the framework needed to better serve the internal

customer Enhances people’s sense of value in being a member of the

organization


Example of Culture Shifts Created on Process Improvement Projects

Organizational Culture Factor Change

The readiness of employees to risk doing things a new way + 41%

Employee belief that improvement efforts have the ability to really cause positive change

+ 42%

The degree to which the organization takes time to understand the underlying cause of problems rather than the symptoms

+ 54%

The degree to which the organization has driven fear out of the work environment

+ 29%

The level of trust the members of your work group have in your supervisor

+ 39%

The degree to which employees feel proud to work for the plant + 59%

The degree to which employees are enthusiastic about being at work + 63%

This slide and the next document actual changes from surveys completed by front-line workers on two separate projects undertaken by the professor.


Example of Culture Shifts Created on Process Improvement Projects (Cont’d.)

Organizational Culture Factor Change

The degree to which you are encouraged to take risks and try new things at work

+ 42%

Employee belief that improvement efforts have the ability to really cause positive change

+ 32%

The degree to which your supervisor's communications are open and sincere

+ 41%

The degree to which your supervisor works with your work group to establish the group's goals

+ 41%

The degree to which the organization takes time to understand the underlying cause of problems rather than the symptoms

+ 46%

The level of trust your supervisor shows in the members of your work group

+ 23%

The level of trust between employees at your own level + 24%

The level of respect your supervisor shows for the members of your work group

+ 27%

The degree to which employees are enthusiastic about being at work + 35%

building a process culture understanding the politics of improvement and how to build a...

Documents

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