Process improvement is a strategic planning methodology aimed at identifying operations or procedures that can be improved upon to encourage smoother procedures, more efficient workflow, and overall business growth. It’s critical to the continued success and growth of any organization. In this article, you’ll learn about 3 common process management problems and the best ways to overcome them – before they overcome you.
Implementing best practices in process management contributes to sound business financials and provides visibility into how well an organization is succeeding in meeting its goals. While there are many tangible benefits to successfully implementing process management at your company, there are also several reasons businesses sometimes fail at these efforts.
Here are 3 of the most common process management issues holding many companies back from their full potential.
1. Lack of governance
Lack of governance, or process control, is where process management failures begin. With poor governance, a process has no chance of succeeding.
The main process management issues often arise if you do not take the time to properly map out a process and choose the correct person to manage it after it is formed. This person should have the ability to change the process when it is required and have a decision-making role within the company.
To overcome this problem, you should:
- Form a process using process mapping
- Choose the correct person to manage the process
2. Inability to access knowledge
According to Gartner, knowledge management is a discipline that promotes an integrated approach to identifying, capturing, evaluating, retrieving, and sharing all of an enterprise's information assets. These assets may include databases, documents, policies, procedures, and previously un-captured expertise and experience in individual workers.
Successful knowledge management is reached when an organization systematically makes use of its knowledge and applies it to its business problem. The main issues in this area often arise when you don’t take the time to create a knowledge management framework.
To overcome this problem, you should:
- Incentivize employees to share knowledge
- Create a process for sharing knowledge
- Invest in technology that allows employees to easily share knowledge
- Make sure you go back to step 1 and have appropriate process governance for knowledge sharing
3. Limited workforce engagement
Engaged employees feel that the work they do contributes meaningfully to the company and their efforts have a direct impact on its success. They strive for innovation, perfection, and efficiency, which leads to more happy customers and reduced expenses. Limited workforce engagement brings process development to a halt. No one is going the extra mile to try to continually make the job easier and more efficient.
According to DZone, to prevent limited workforce engagement from holding your company back, you should implement the steps below.
To overcome this problem, you should:
- Inform - provide employees with the information they need to understand what is expected of them.
- Inspire - connect employees to the company's vision and mission.
- Interact - support employees with training, coaching, and feedback.
- Involve - take action with employees to improve processes and solve problems.
- Incent - deploy appropriate systems to measure, reward, and reinforce desired behaviors.
Implementing solutions to these common process management issues takes considerable effort. Join us for the upcoming Process Improvement at the Speed of Business webinar to get more information that can help you take the necessary steps to ensure the continued growth and success of your organization.
