7 reasons to manage by strategic process: rather than by personal or departmental authority

Strategic processes collectively identify what an organization does and how it goes about doing it. Departmental org. charts (remnants of a bygone industrial age) do not.  Survival in what is being called the “shift-age” demands a corporate retrofit.  Departmental and individual authority tend to focus on experience and knowledge.  Those “in the know” are slow to let go.  Survival and prosperity requires a 180 degree shift from a mindset of  knowing, to an attitude of “not knowing” —replacing trust in knowledge and experience with processes for finding out and taking action faster than the competition. 

There are four generic strategic processes:

1. Getting and retaining customers
2. Delighting the customer with an excellent product/service
3. Meeting the needs of the partner chain
4. Forward thinking

Additional strategic processes might include:

• Product development
• Manufacturing lines

Seven reasons to make a process retrofit

1. To exorcize industrial-age attitudes and habits that inhibit profits and produce a vulnerability to competition.
2. To increase the customer’s perception of value.  Perceived value is determined by the customer’s total experience. They don’t care who does what.  For example, service failures are usually a precursor to sales failure (and vice versa).
3. To eliminate waste and rework.  The value of enhancements must be assessed from a “total company” perspective.  Change initiated unilaterally in one department might cause an even greater problem in another.    
4. To eliminate departmental serfdoms and reduce personal aggrandizements.
5.  To establish meaningful performance metrics.  What isn’t measured can’t be managed—the bottom line is not departmental.
6. To effectively grow or cut back.  Movement invariably increases the need to multi-task across departmental boundaries.
7. To create transferable wealth.  If operating disciplines reside only in the head of the CEO or other individuals, the company is “worth less” to potential buyers.  The owners and employees are vulnerable to competitive threat .