It's great to be at APQC in Houston right now! Those of you who aren't here… well… you're missing out. First of all, Houston weather is perfect this time of year. When the rest of North America starts shivering, we venture outside to enjoy temperate perfection. And if it happens to rain, no problem…

The goal of process management is to improve performance. Whether the emphasis is customer retention, cycle time, employee satisfaction, efficiency, business growth, productivity, or any other goal, organizations implement process management to improve something. Countless books have been written…

Without proper change management, you can forget about moving your organization to process management. There is a reason change management is located at the heart of APQC's Seven Tenets of Process Management—number four of seven. All the other tenets, in a way, revolve around change management. The…

It doesn't take much interaction with APQC before you hear about benchmarking. Our business revolves around collecting data, conducting studies, and sharing information. Our mission is to connect organizations with one another to learn. But did you know that we have dozens of resources to help you…

Executive: We need to implement business process management. How do we go about doing it? Colleague: Well, we don't have a center for process improvement, and the group that usually handles enterprise projects does not have expertise in process management specifically. Executive: I hear that…

It's difficult to shake off old patterns, especially when those patterns are dysfunctional processes in an organization. Most organizations have processes that they know do not work, and yet they hold onto them—sometimes for years. Take the stage-gate process in product development for example.…

Ah, measurement… It's been too long since I wrote to you. You do such wonderful things for us in business. You show us how everyone is performing right now and warn us when there could be trouble ahead. What's more, you make new things happen and help people see how far we've come. I realize all…

The word is out: perfectionism stifles improvement. In our personal lives, most of us know that perfectionism can lead to procrastination, a mass of unfinished (because they are "imperfect") projects, wasted time, frustration, inaction, and low self-esteem. Despite this knowledge and many people's…

Having trouble deconstructing your business in terms of processes? Try this exercise on for size. Imagine how a process would flow if you and only you had to perform the entire thing. Pick a particular key activity, and begin looking at all the tasks that enable that activity to be completed.…

Love risk but hate loss?  You're not alone. “This new market strategy is great… but what if we lost one of our key clients?” “This product has the potential to make a huge splash… but should we stray too far from what we are known for?” “This improvement proposal could improve our…