A Business Process

Awhile back, the book Who Moved My Cheese? was popular among managers. There was a widespread understanding that individuals, and organizations, needed to constantly scan the environment, evaluate options, and quickly change course in order to successfully compete in today's technology-driven marketplace.

Ironically, perhaps, I'm now surrounded by an organizational culture of rigidity and complacency. If something doesn't work, people blame the business process (even if there isn't a business process.) (Yes, I actually heard this today, "Yes, you should have been notified of the outage but there isn't a business process for that.).

The secretaries and I agree that the phrase "business process" has become nausea-inducing.

Imagine, in the "Who Moved My Cheese" scenario, that the mice voluntarily spend months...years even...in meetings, trying to agree upon a route through a maze they've never navigated before. Through layers of committees the process would be sketched out until the "top mouse committee" gave the go-ahead to navigate toward "the prize."

Chances are, the cheese gets pretty rotten and stale by then (or, in my own case, our "customers" take themselves elsewhere.).

Here's to It's FINALLY Friday and a a break from carrying the weight of b.p.'s (bleh).