Lean Six Sigma For Leaders

7Leading a Process Based Organisation

If you can't describe what you are doing as a process, you don't know what you're doing.

These words were spoken by the quality ‘guru’ W Edwards Deming, and we realise that this is a controversial statement and will either be accepted or not in your mind depending on your definition of the word ‘process’. We know, from discussing this word with many leaders, that the word ‘process’ can be a problem and have negative connotations of bureaucracy and lack of flexibility. It is not universally accepted as a ‘good’ thing. Have you ever heard the expression from someone delivering some kind of service to you ‘I can't provide what you want because the ‘process’ won't allow it.’ This is crazy and the very opposite of what a good process should provide.

So, what is going on here? Why has ‘process’, in some organisations, got such a bad name? In this chapter, we are going to look at the leader's role in relation to process and why leaders should be interested in, and involved in, establishing, maintaining, monitoring, looking after and generally caring about processes.

What is a Process?

Firstly, what exactly do we mean by ‘process’?

We define the word process as ‘the way work is done’. You might prefer to use the word ‘workflow’ which is somewhat easier to grasp. That word is used in video production but we think it could have wider acceptability. For now, though, we will stick with the Lean Six Sigma accepted lingo and use the word ‘process’. ...