Great Magicians never reveal their tricks, right?
They provide us with a once-in-a-lifetime show - From the presentation to the final act, including “WOW” moments, anticipation, excitement, and perhaps - a little bit of magic:)
There is a whole process and order behind each act, something that you've probably missed if you looked only at the big reveal.
Just like we, as clients, sit there - enjoying the show - there are competitors - analyzing every move, every hand gesture - and usually without luck - trying to figure out the exact process that leads to this Magician’s success - and how s/he fills up the room.
The result is essential - but the process is what makes the magic work.
So to get better results and stay ahead of the curve, we must continue improving our current processes and spotlight each step, interaction, and behavior.
Organizations today tend to measure specific, quantitative outcomes - their sales, products, number of client meetings, project hours, etc.
Although it sounds very reasonable – a process has been executed, and they measure the outcomes – it also bears several challenges. The main challenge is that measuring outcomes explicitly does not guarantee that the path to achieving these outcomes was efficient.
So how can we ensure our processes are optimized to the fullest extent?
"You can't manage what you can't measure" (Peter Drucker - Management Expert)
Peter Drucker, also known as "The Father of Modern Management," coined the term "Knowledge Worker," which refers to workers who achieve non-routine problem solving within organizations and - relating to this blog - how your human capital reacts when processes and protocols come into effect.
Can one gain behavioral insights that can improve existing processes?
Many contemporary BP Managers are looking for tools that allow them to zoom out and see a high-level view of their processes. These managers often forget to zoom in to get a more practical understanding of how things get done and how they could stay effective while increasing their efficiency level.
The majority use BPMN as a common language that helps communicate the actual workflow but have difficulty extracting specific event-related data that could benefit business insights. This challenge occurs for a good reason - managing multiple processes simultaneously is challenging.
Organizations are like living, breathing organisms in which multiple business units interact and react with other business units and people to achieve a particular function. So - instead of focusing on outcomes only - companies need to learn the standard ways their organizations operate (internally and externally) and dive deep to examine their processes.
To understand and optimize existing processes and to create new efficient processes, the following should be measured:
These are essential questions that typically get overlooked.
Below are a few tips for fostering a positive impact on your organization’s processes and performance:
What if you had the power to visualize all of your organization’s processes to examine bottlenecks, stress points, blind spots, or overlapping? For example, units overwhelmed with missions and projects might experience stress, affecting their ability to complete their tasks if there are not enough workers or the project is about to enter a holiday season. Moreover, if a team is busy with many projects at once, how will you detect the most crucial project outcomes that require prioritization to prevent choke points? These are the questions business professionals need to ask themselves.
Collating this data will eventually improve existing processes and protocols (if the insights drawn from the data are applied wisely) and will create an opportunity to develop new processes.
One of the most crucial elements of optimizing existing processes and creating effective new ones is the ability to collect data on the actual behaviors of organization members. Processes can be optimized through the use of AI tools that analyze specific members/business units and their behaviors in various conditions.
The current challenge
The current challenge faced by many companies in this field is getting all participants to attend a physical simulation and oversee their behavior to extract this data. Such a challenge is resolved through the use of real-time digital simulations and process mining.
Digital simulations allow you to identify the main problematic areas (bottlenecks, stress, overlapping, and blind spots) to enable managers to outline the desired outcomes as well as the various pathways to achieving them.
In conclusion
The way your organization behaves in certain conditions is one of the most (if not the most) important things to examine in working towards process efficiency. Good BP managers can handle this on their own up to a point (usually when their company reaches a specific size).
Using AI tools that create a digital environment where processes are tested by simulation and where behavior can be measured and analyzed is crucial for solving business crossroads. Such a capability has the added benefit of identifying insights that drive organizational excellence -knowing what works, what doesn't work, and what could work better.
Just like a magician - mastering the process will allow you to control your show - your outcomes.
