A new book: RAIDers of a Lost Art: Reinventing the Art of Business Process Excellence

Einstein once said that everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.  This is true in every aspect of life, but should be most recently applied business.  In the book RAIDers of a Lost Art: Reinventing the Art of Business Process Excellence the author teaches ways to improve business processes.  The trick to improving is to keep in mind that the changes made should, in fact, somehow make doing business simpler.

There is a trick to process improvement.  The person trying to implement the changes needs to keep in mind that simpler is better and, of course, that there is no need to reinvent the wheel.  Just as the wheel continues to turn and spin, so must the key to business process excellence be that whatever processes are used are repeatable processes.  To have to keep creating new processes that can only be used one time or a couple of times would be a complete and utter waste of time.

We have a saying around my house that applies not only to life, but even more so to business.  That which gets measured gets done.  And while I repeat it to myself as I create my daily lists, it’s also meaningful in the life of business.  With that in mind, business processes should be measurable processes.  If they are measured, they will get done.  And there also needs to be a way to see the results.  When we are working online, most of the applications have a tracking system built in so that we can tell for certain the effectiveness of what we are doing.  The same needs to be true for all aspects of business and the business processes that are used.

At the same time, businesses need to keep in mind that the processes used can’t be too rigid.  The flexible processes, ones that can be adapted and used in a variety of situations to work in various settings are those that will endure and stand the test of time.  This is even truer of simple processes, which is the entire point of changing and working with better business processes.  It would be absolutely senseless to create a process that is more complicated and challenging to use.

In order to attain process excellence, the creator or creators need to keep in mind that Einstein quote and achieve a balance in working with a simple process.  With a little practice with business process management, the future of business will work much better.