The Top Most Best Important - People or Process or Technology?
1. People – what are the key issues: who owns the process, who is involved, what are their roles, are they committed to improving it and working together and importantly are they prepared to do the work to fix the problem
2. Process – a process can be defined as starting with a trigger event that creates a chain of actions that results in something being prepared for a customer of that process. Starting at high level and identifying the key big steps is important to see the process from end to end. Then moving into more detail to capture the various layers involved and various exceptions. Focusing on the high frequency (Pareto principle) transactions can have significant benefit to standardizing the process. But also remember that it can be the non-standard transactions where service is slipping most or the potential for significant failure in the process may exist.
3. Technology – Now that people are aligned, and the process developed and clarified, technology can be applied to ensure consistently in application of the process and to provide the thin guiding rails to keep the process on track – to make it easier to follow the process than not do so.
I often see executives and project managers take charge of projects and focus on process first, people second, and technology last when it comes to change... While I understand the thinking behind that mindset, in today's world it is very difficult to leave the technology as an afterthought. And when it comes to changing how organizations collaborate & socialize in this globalized web 2.0 world, technology is usually part of the answer. Now some argue that technology should be secondary to process & culture when it comes to change. On the other hand, sometimes the “system” actually causes the bad behavior or doesn’t allow or encourage the right human behavior. So what is more important – people, process or technology?
If a CEO wants to know why engineers don’t act “social” and share knowledge across teams, then it’s a probably a people or cultural issue or incentives aren’t aligned accordingly or management isn’t encouraging it. Technology alone won’t change that. Social behavior is not something that can be mandated or dictated by management. Otherwise it’s just another thing we “have to do” and is viewed as a task or work. Social behavior is a two way street between workers and management with a heavy emphasis on management ….. who needs to encourage, promote, and reward good behavior. And the technology if implemented correctly should be there to support the culture, enable socialization, and hopefully easily facilitate the desired behavior. I’d argue that you can’t always treat the technology and the system as secondary to culture……as the system influences the process and culture as much as process impacts technology.
Some corporate cultures don’t promote collaboration or social behavior because of the systems they have in place. The airlines for example have terrible antiquated systems. And if the process is not easy or takes too long because the person behind the counter is typing too many letters and codes or doesn’t know how to easily do something — workers and customers may say “why bother” and everyone is frustrated by the “system”.
At a macro level, social behavior within a country is often influenced by the “system” of government. The founding fathers of the US seemed to focus first on creating a "system" that ultimately empowers and protects people's rights. I'm not sure if there's enough focus on "process" in government. If there is one -- well, it's probably inefficient at best. While I don't think you can leave the "system" as an afterthought, government systems might tell us how important the process actually is. Of course too much process & control is no good either as history has taught us. Anyway....
Technology in so many ways today influences the way we socialize, collaborate, and share knowledge …. Today, workers rely too heavily on email & instant messaging as the main source of communicating, collaborating , and sharing knowledge where information gets lost and workers can't filter out the noise and simply miss or ignore the “message”. Blackberry’s are great (I have one), but sometimes they simply add to the problem vs. make us more productive….
It seems safe to conclude that you have to treat technology, people, and process equally if you want your organization to become that social and collaborative enterprise everyone talks about and puts in their grand “vision” statements.
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