Winning Without Competition: How to Break Out of a Commodity ...

is so important. It prevents improving part of the organization at the expense of
other parts of the organization.
Team Exercise: Process Improvement
Appendix Two provides an exercise you can follow to develop a feel for process
improvement. After competing the exercise, answer the following questions:
• Do we have a process orientation in our company? If not, should we?
• Which of our processes need to be improved? If we could really improve
these, would it make us more competitive or profitable? Would it create
differentiation from our competition?
• Are we willing to commit resources to process improvement?
• Do we need any outside help to be more effective in process improvement?
Process Redesign
Organizations succeed by doing the right things right, not just doing things right.
Redesign is about doing the right things; process improvement is about doing
things right. Process redesign is very sophisticated work. It’s not done overnight
with a simple six-step process. It requires careful understanding of the current
process and deep insights into the reasons today’s outcomes are what they are.
Nevertheless, process redesign has tremendous opportunities for payback.
Process redesign dissolves the problem, i.e., the problem no longer appears. It
differs from fixing the process, which handles a problem better. Fixing modifies
the existing system. It removes what’s wrong by adding, deleting or modifying a
step in the existing system. Redesigning, on the other hand, starts with a blank
sheet of paper.
Process redesign is based on the following concepts:
• Each system is well designed to act as it behaves. In other words, you get
exactly what your process or system was designed to create.
• Each person in the system is acting rationally within the context of the
system.
• Often times the limitations of the system are defined by what’s going on
around the system, i.e., in the containing system. The most important
limitations may not be in the system itself.
• To change a system’s outcomes, behavior and operation, you need to change:
~ Its structure (i.e., what are the parts and how are they organized)
~ Its motivations (i.e., incentives, rewards and beliefs, why participants do
as they do and who benefits from current behaviors and why)
~ Its key processes (i.e., how the work gets done)
Pamphlet #5 Page 193