From People- to Process-Driven Organizations… Welcome to the Glue Age!

In this new era of business, success requires an organization capable of focusing its resources around delivering upon its strategy and meeting the present and future needs of customers. Organizations can be thought of as two types: process-driven and people-driven.

Process-driven organizations

A process-driven organization achieves its business objectives by managing activities in a procedural way. The processes within your organization allow you to focus your teams’ efforts so that they deliver on your strategy, meet your customer needs, and win you new customers.

People-driven organizations

By comparison, a people-driven organization relies heavily on the individuals and the skills that they possess as the way of delivering on your business strategy. There are, however, a number of challenges for people-driven organizations.

Challenges with people-driven organizations

1. Time limitations – There are only so many hours in the day and only so much that one person can ever achieve.
2. Skill limitations – An organization’s success can become limited by the skills that an individual possesses. There can be large lag times as we attempt to cross-pollinate knowledge between team members in the organization.
3. Dependence on the labor market – There is not always an availability of people with the right skills in the job market.
4. Moral dilemma – In any business, there is an expectation of good faith that staff members will execute operations for the organization in the way in which they were intended to.

Moving from people-driven to process-driven

It’s essential to understand that documenting processes alone does not make you a process-driven organization.

We need to follow a few steps to move us along this path:

1. Align your organization around process – Align your entire organization culturally and operationally around business processes — they must be at the heart of your organization. Think of your organization’s activities as a series of end-to-end processes. These may extend outside of your organization, but they are at the core of what you do every day in delivering your service.
2. Model these key processes to capture knowledge around them – Document your procedures explicitly so that anybody can read and follow the steps. What are some of the things that you do in your business everyday? Products like LucidChart can help here.
3. Allocate core process management – Allocate the management of your core processes to individuals in the business who will be accountable for them.
4. Build an infrastructure to house your process documentation – Build a central repository for information within the organization. Some people opt for spreadsheets and databases such as Dropbox and Google Drive. This is also where IT Glue™ can help.
5. Foster an understanding – Emphasize the importance of process. Process should be built into your business strategy, and everybody in the organization should be enthusiastic about process.
6. Move to a culture of teamwork and transparency – Ensure that everyone can access information to avoid creating silos of knowledge.
7. Make process measurement part of your management system – Continually measure your process effectiveness in order to continually improve.

Here at IT Glue, we love working with a great team of people. IT Glue was born out of the recognized need for a tool to allow these people to move towards a more process-led business style of management.

We have entered a new age of doing business. Welcome to the Glue Age!