The operational environment is characterised by the proliferation of initiatives that touch on the all-too-often cited people, process and technology space but operational thinking is confused by a number of familiar misconceptions:

1. The infamous ’silver bullet’ – whether this be BPM, New System Replacement /System Enhancement, Lean Six Sigma or BAM is characterised by the incorrect belief that in focusing all efforts on one of these initiatives our operational world will be transferred into the infamous ‘greener pasture’.

2. You can’t focus on more than one thing at a time – in conjunction with the first misconception, there is the belief that, or rather lack of understanding of, what is actually required to support the ability to do ‘multiple things/projects’.

The reality is much of the above is premised on the fact that day-to-day operations are already being run optimally…….isn’t this where so much success or failure is pinned from the get go?

During our recent presentation at the IT Web BPM summit much support was expressed around the following for:

1. The inability for BPM on its own to transform operational management and guarantee results.

2. eg’s ability to either precede or implement concurrently with a BPM deployment to ensure managerial behaviour transformation.

I have the presentation slides from this event that cover how day–to-day operations are not being run optimally and what can be done to turn this around quickly, with some outstanding results.

For anyone who is interested in receiving the slides please email tonycohn@egsa.co.za