Process & Creativity

Business Process is something that affects us all on a daily basis – but we often aren’t directly aware of it and have even less control over it than we do visibility.

In my last blog, I mentioned that large Global Enterprises arguably have a much greater effect on our livelihoods than our current governments. When you consider the size and reach of companies like Apple, BP, Barclays, Google, Amazon and Walmart it is hard to reasonably refute this assertion. Business process sits at the heart of these Global Enterprise making them tick over and facilitating their growth - or some cases, demise.

Wikipedia gives a beautifully cold description of the contribution business process makes to our world.

"A business process is a collection of related, structured activities or tasks that produce a specific service or product (serve a particular goal) for a particular customer or set of customers. It often can be visualized with a flowchart as a sequence of activities with interleaving decision points or with a Process Matrix as a sequence of activities with relevance rules based on the data in the process."

Basically, it’s a set of instructions on how to do business. Why do we have them?

Adam Smith –an 18th Century Economist- revolutionized the way British firms manufactured goods by introducing the idea of specialization and we can see the benefits of this idea around the world today. For example;


Mass produced cars are built on an assembly line where many people would be involved in putting together the various component parts that make up a car. Each worker has one or two specific jobs on the assembly line and by repeating them over and over again, they get better and better at doing it. If you employed the same amount of people but made each worker build a whole car each, it wouldn’t be anywhere near as efficient.

The productivity gains and boosts in the production derived from the divisions of labour fueled 19th and 20th-century industry and enabled unparalleled growth in GDP all over the world. Since then, businesses have been finding increasingly sophisticated ways to fine tune their business processes and where possible (and cost-effective) - computerise, mechanise and automate.


To a large degree, this has been a successful endeavour. For all the flaws of capitalism, as an engine, industry and enterprise have raised the overall standard of living across the globe -albeit not evenly and I appreciate some people would choose to debate this point also. However, as Enterprise becomes increasingly more integral to human progression -globally- should we be paying more attention to it - like we do our governments? Just a thought... 

Larger companies definitely rely more on the formal business process more than the smaller ones. Smaller companies rely more on individuals rather than on automated de-personalised processes. The personality and talents of the individuals in smaller businesses are much more evident on the surface of the company - in their products, in their services and in how you deal with them. Small businesses rely on individual brilliance and a culture that dictates passion and dedication - this is how they differentiate themselves and compete. Perhaps this is why the majority of innovation comes from small companies and start-up businesses? Just another thought...

Does the business process constrain creativity? Apple seems to manage just fine, but they tend to be an exception to the rule.

Having said all this, growth will expose small companies if suitable business processes are not put in place to handle scale. Human nature is such that we make mistakes, particularly when overworked because there is only so much workflow an individual (even a brilliant one) can handle at any one time. Processes need to be put in place to support the business, but how these processes are implemented determine whether or not they help or hinder.

This poses another question, have business processes -in particular automation and computerisation- gone too far?

The comedy expression of "computer says no" is a standard joke in Britain. Almost everyone has endured a completely de-personalised service when entering a bank or speaking to an insurance company down the phone. Good processes keep human beings involved in business decisions that require a personal touch or a high degree of situational understanding that cannot be easily digitised and matrixed. Most people would agree that that the US sub-prime-mortgage crisis -which significantly contributed to the credit crunch- would never have happened had human beings been kept in the loop at the critical business decision points - an old fashioned bank manager, for example? A highly trained business person able to make decisions based on circumstances and individuals.

In an ideal world, business process marries efficiency with individual brilliance. It will help personality and excellence rise into the metaphorical skin of the business so that it can interface with its markets and customers in a personal and differentiating way. Efficiencies are great, but I have a feeling that in the 21st century, the enterprise will derive more value from their creative workforce than they will from cost-saving exercises. Business Process is capable of being the catalyst to better collaboration and workflows, but it means taking an eye off the cost savings and learning how to measure and understand the top line more accurately - the fluffy stuff as pragmatists would say.

There are a few examples of this in the world today that I would like to share with you.

Nobel Peace Prize winner Mohammad Yunus -a brilliant economist- did a brilliant job proving the flaws in the processes of the mainstream banking system (as if we needed any more evidence!). He developed the concept of microcredit and helped set up a bank -called Grameen- who would only loan to the poorest of the poor, entrepreneurs who failed credit checks at traditional banks because they have no collateral. Traditional banks don’t have processes to capture the knowledge and potential of these entrepreneurs, this requires other knowledgeable people to work with the loan applicant to understand their ability to get a return on their skill sets in the marketplace. This is the premise of the Grameen Bank, people deal with people and as result, they have loaned over £7.09bn ($11.35bn) with £6.31bn ($10.11bn) being paid back. This is a loan recovery rate of 96.67% - pretty amazing if you ask me. Mr Yunus believes we can eliminate poverty altogether in a matter of years (not decades) if we can adopt this approach globally. Personally, I wish him all the luck in the world.

The second example is Google. In just under 10 years, Google established itself as an internet giant. Anyone who uses the internet probably uses one or more of Google’s products. Google’s initial mission statement was “to organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”. A bold mission statement, but I would suggest they have been relatively successful. If you need evidence, just Google it ;).

One of the well-known policies at Google is the 20% policy. This allows employees to use 20% of their working day to anything they want - literally anything. There are only a couple of caveats - it has to be legal and it has to be ethical. By freeing up their employees to be creative in an unstructured and unmonitored way -with no process- thoughts are completely unconstrained. Some of the best ideas Google has had have come from the 20% policy. It takes a very brave and progressive company and management structure to let go of their perceived control over its employees. They aren't doing too badly though are they? market capitalisation to date of $251bn US dollars.

Ok, I have talked about of a lot of stuff in one blog, but mostly because this is a subject I find fascinating, hopefully, you have enjoyed the read as much as I enjoyed writing. Now, to keep the summary short. In essence, it is my firm belief that the business process is a good thing, but like anything, it can be deployed poorly and cause a lot of harm. I would like to see businesses refocusing their efforts on the business process to better enable creative knowledge work and collaboration. I would like to see less emphasis on cost savings and efficiencies because they are short term wins that more often than not create longer-term shortfalls. Boosting productivity and creativity are longer-term wins with much greater returns -complete game changers-  but it takes bravery, brilliance and patience to achieve. I believe we have the talent in this country (ARM for example) to produce these types of business leaders and now is the time for them to step forward.

Stay brave, be creative and thanks for reading!

Chancey



Links to references made - in order of occurrence:

• Adam Smith - The wealth of nations (a division of labour, specialisation)
• US sub-prime mortgage lending
• Muhammed Yunus
• Grameen Bank
• Googles 20%
• ARM