We may not have a vision, but we have a process for that.

A few days ago someone asked me, "What are the similarities between the two large employers you have worked for - Shell and Philip Morris?" I contemplated for a second. The answer was there instantly. Process.

I'm being facetious here. There are many other things in common: large blue chip companies, both in Fortune 100, both mammothy in decisions, both take good care of people, both with global footprint, both... The list can go on for a while. Yet. The processes that are in place in these two companies take the policy book writing to a totally different level. I guess that any organisation larger than 3 people need to have a process to function (think about toilet paper replenishment in your own family), and processes are the inevitable evil that haunts thousands of corporate workers worldwide.

Processes are not necessarily bad. In the HR field especially. You know how merit increases work, you know how to calculate your annual bonus, you know how learning course registrations get processes and you know what and when will happen if you move house to another country, dragging your expatriate life along. Processes make it easy to Automate/Standardise/Simplify/Eliminate a piece of work that has become a commodity. Processes eliminate the necessity of taking decisions every time something happens: you just know that you need to follow what the manual tells you. And here comes the rub...

Hmmm, the rub comes every time people stop to think. It's easy to hide behind the book and resort to the algorithm of flowcharts and swim lanes that the consultancies pepper so generously the wall space of large corporates (I think it's some sort of morbid pleasure for them to create a flowchart or two in a spare moment between lunch and trip to the airport). These process flows kill the human touch and turn workplace into a machine. Bad. Daniel Pink in Whole New Mind told us about the danger of living by the process and how those process-driven job travel East. This week's editorial in The Economist added technology into the swirl (Coming to an office near you), basically saying: it's not even shipping your jobs East, it's giving it to the machine:

"The effect of today’s technology on tomorrow’s jobs will be immense—and no country is ready for it"

Luckily, the same Economist offers the solution: competitiveness and survival will be dependent on managerial effectiveness and innovation. Music for the ears of any corporate learning officer with a budget. Nightmare for the CEO. Why? Because there is no process for resolving an interpersonal conflict in your team and the best innovative ideas defy flowcharts and occur against all odds in the most unexpected places. Not every company can afford to be a Google or an Apple. Every company can try though. Large organisations with strong and unique corporate cultures are hard to change, but change is there. I see the drive towards collaboration (no process), greater authenticity in leaders (no process) and social learning (no process).

There is a fine line between processes and technocracy. As long they do not weaken your credibility as a strong leader and a thinking human being, they are a great thing. Otherwise - detrimental.

Vampires, Boomerangs and Rabbits

Have you ever thought what type of problems surround you on a day-to-day basis? There is a theory I have been sticking to for quite a while. Tried googling it, but little luck, so not sure where it is coming from, and at the same time don't want to attribute it totally to myself.

There are three types of problems that you want to avoid, and each type needs to be dealt differently with:

• Vampires: those suck your life out of you until you cannot concentrate on anything else and they they finish you with a classic bite-'n-suck.
• Boomerangs: no matter how far you throw them and how much force you apply, they keep coming back to you, bringing new stuff to deal with directly proportionate to the effort you took in order to get rid of them.
• Rabbits: these small balls of hair, nuisance and noise appear from nowhere, like bats from the belfry, cause havoc and destruction and sometimes disappear just as quickly. Can be harmless, but often need too many resources to be localized and slaughtered for consumption.

How do you deal with those? One thing is clear: you have other more important stuff to deal with apart from these three non-value adding types of distraction. Great if you have a personal guardian angel in the flesh of a crisis manager, who thrives in chaos. Great if you can afford an expensive consultant to spend hours of his or her time running around with spreadsheets and presentations. Great if you can outsource the whole bloody thing. But what if you cannot, or if it concerns you personally and not the business you are working in? What can you recommend?

Signature Processes

The big discussion of last week's Strategic Management class was around inability of other companies to replicate the successes of their competitors. On the surface, it is a piece of cake, but still - why is there only one Wal-Mart and why has Continental Lite failed trying to repeat the success of Southwest Airlines? All information is publicly available and we know exactly how each one of those praiseworthy enterprises have built their successes, yet nobody have been able to do that stunt again.

The answer might be in the research done by Professor Lynda Gratton at London School of Business. In her recent book Glow she talks about signature processes as opposed to best practices. The Wikipedia definition of a best practice says:

A best practice is a technique, method, process, activity, incentive, or reward that is believed to be more effective at delivering a particular outcome than any other technique, method, process, etc. when applied to a particular condition or circumstance.

 Elaborating on this definition, it is easy to see that the driving words are "technique", "process" or "method" - those are action words. Such are easy to document, map, describe, and therefore - replicate. When you see your neighbor mowing the lawn at 10 in the evening to avoid the excruciating Madrid heat during the day, you might realize that you are being a fool doing that at 3 in the afternoon (which guarantees you skin cancer, a heat stroke and disdainful looks of passers-by) and copy your neighbor's way of labor organization, which in this particular case will be considered best practice.

The difference of a signature process (practice) is that it is awfully easy to understand, but virtually impossible to replicate. Consider a couple of examples provided by Gratton:

• morning executive meetings at Royal Bank of Scotland
• BP buddy training program (Peer Assist)
• modular architecture at Nokia
• selection process at Goldman Sachs
• Challenge Cap at BT and others

All those processes are public, everybody knows about them, still nobody has been successful in replicating those. That constitutes the basis for competitive advantage, and establishes the ground for future success, just because you can be sure that it is among those few things that the competitors will not be able "steal" from you.

The interesting commonality of those signature processes is that all of them reside in the HR-related areas. The moral of the story? People/change/culture innovations or practices are critical to your business profitability in the long run. Technology (no matter how complex it may be) or patents will not protect you for long - anything can be back-engineered or reconstructed and slightly modified and you are facing fierce competition in no time. Thus, to avoid the red oceans of competition, make sure you find your own value-adding people processes that will leverage your business capabilities and distinguish you in the market.