^The APQC Blog

What’s the first thing that pops into your head when you hear the phrase “data and analytics”? For me, it’s numbers. Numbers being crunched, twisted, and spit out by a large mainframe computer in a heavily air-conditioned room.

What did you think about?

One of the hardest things about working in knowledge management is seeing wave after wave of organizations make the same dumb mistakes. As a believer in knowledge reuse, I want to see fledgling KM programs benefit from their predecessors’ lessons learned instead of reinventing the wheel. But over and over again, we talk to organizations that think they’re special and don’t need to follow proven practices when it comes to developing their KM capabilities. 

“Risks are more elevated and interconnected than ever before,” observes Cecilia Reyes, Chief Risk Officer, Zurich Insurance Group. She was quoted in the report just released by the World Economic Forum: The Global Risks Report 2016. Zurich served as strategic partner for the report.

What are keys to successful process improvement initiatives that overcome resistance? At United Illuminating, dashboards and status reports were implemented despite employees being skeptical at first.  Phil Surato, Manager of Project Management Strategy and Mary Lou Palmieri, Director Portfolio Services at United Illuminating talk about how they implemented dashboards & status reports despite resistance.

I bet that you suspect you are addicted. Just to be sure, answer the following questions honestly.

Much has been made of getting Millennials to see supply chain as a rewarding career option. Efforts such as the 30 Under 30 Supply Chain Stars recognition program promote the career possibilities of recent graduates entering the supply chain field. These programs also highlight the potential of younger professionals.

On January 11, 2016, The Wall Street Journal reported that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) doubled the number of enforcement cases it handled in 2015. For those unfamiliar with the CFPB, it was created in 2011 as an independent government entity to protect consumers in the financial sector.

As we started to prepare for 2016, we surveyed over 200 process and performance management practitioners to understand their common challenges and priorities for the upcoming year, including process management. What we found was that most organizations continue to struggle with moving from a function-based to process-thinking organization.

This infographic explores the top challenges in process management and provides some simple tips for addressing them.

Have you experienced difficulty implementing a change initiative or getting buy-in for a process improvement? If so, you’re not alone. In fact, over 20 different people-related challenges are getting in the way of process and performance improvements, according to APQC’s recent process and performance management survey. Organizational resistance topped the list of process-change barriers, followed by culture, or as one person described it, “the culture vulture.”

We all make some bad decisions: small ones, like buying those adorable shoes that were on sale but hurt your feet. Or colossal ones, like taking a bad job, investing in a doomed start-up or doomed-to-fail product, marrying someone obviously incompatible or invading a country. 

Why do smart people make dumb decisions?

Well, I happen to believe that the confirmation bias is often the culprit and pretty much at the root of many bad decisions and most human nearsightedness and meanness. It is why we get blindsided when the clues were there all along.