Recently my teenage son has begun preparing for his inevitable independence by learning how to cook. It all started with simple banter—I told him that one cannot live on toast and microwavable mac and cheese forever. However, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t his dietary concerns but comments from his friends that many girls appreciate a guy that can cook that actually won him over.
Initially my son had no idea where to start. He didn’t understand even the basic building blocks of cooking, like how to use a stove to boil water. So to tackle this adventure called cooking we started with something he was already familiar with—mac and cheese. As his confidence in the basic steps of cooking grew, I introduced him to the pasta section of one of my cook books. This helped him expand his repertoire to other pasta dishes because they all contained familiar terms and process steps. He is now responsible for cooking dinner at least once a week and is talking about trying something completely different: baking.
But what does this have to do with process frameworks?
A process framework, like a cook book, is a means of grouping processes into appropriately related categories. Most process frameworks use the concept of value chains as the basis of these categories. The most common reason that people use process frameworks is to help them understand and group processes into a classification structure in order to better understand how the processes relate to each other and how they help to get things done.
A process framework provides a standardized checklist of processes that can be used to:
- classify processes into groups of related processes,
- support end-to-end process ownership,
- establish a common language between groups,
- provide visibility on how work gets done within the organization,
- improve hand-offs and cross-functional collaboration,
- support benchmarking and performance management,
- align departments for IT rollouts and updates,
- frame content management—ultimately putting information in the pathway of employees as they accomplish work, and
- pinpoint and prioritize performance or process improvement opportunities.
By using a common language to define all tasks, organizations can standardize their approach to a number of crucial activities: process management, continuous improvement, benchmarking, and content management. Without such a pre-defined list, multiple business units within a single organization could have multiple interpretations that ultimately undermine any chance to manage a process consistently across an enterprise. However…
Process Frameworks Are Not Without Their Challenges
To begin with, most frameworks require some refinement. Process frameworks are based on what’s accurate for most organizations and require adjusting for:
- industry differences,
- regulatory or geographical restrictions or differences,
- changing terms that reflect your organization’s terminology,
- matching activities to how your organization accomplishes work, and
- creating definitions for level four tasks—this is the level of frameworks that typically require the highest percent of changes, because this starts to move from the “what” to the “how”.
Furthermore, most people are not used to thinking in process terms. Hence adopting a process framework requires shifting how people think in order to overcome challenges in organizational alignment, governance, and implementation.
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