Your Process Lies

In business, all process is at best an attempt to describe or control reality

There are two ways to slide easily through life: to believe everything or to doubt everything. Both ways save us from thinking. —Alfred Korzybski

Over the last several years, I’ve studied a lot of processes and watched communities grow around them. I’ve been a member of many of these communities. As processes gain credibility, they generate excitement. As excitement mounts, the human desire for perfection plays a funny trick on us: We begin to identify with the process.

The fact that we get our Black Belts or certifications doesn’t help with this. We’ve now invested ourselves in the process, and we want to use it. And why not? By and large these processes are pretty cool. We see ways they can make life better. And we love taking the easy way out, so we treat the process as an absolute.

But by now we’ve all read the news that the map is not the territory.

…

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Comments

Fantastic article

Hello Mr. Benson:

My opinion is that your article is fantastic. The article discusses the ambiguity of language. As an example, here is a
sentence where the punctuation makes a big difference. “The bear eats, shoots
& leaves.” “Eats, Shoots & Leaves” is the title of a book about improper
use of punctuation and how that adds to the ambiguity of language, especially
the English language.

I believe your article
exposes the fallacy of demanding certainty in an uncertain world. We want certain control. It reflects on
the idea that “every theory is correct in its own world, but the problem is that
the theory may not make contact with this world.” W. Edward
Deming. We are constantly making assumptions that may or may not mess with our minds.

Thank you,

Dirk

Contrary Opinion

Jim. I believe that your are not correct in several places in this article. It is your opinion, so who am I to criticize.What is fungible? from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fungibility we see that it is "... the property of a good or a commodity whose individual units are capable of mutual substitution... It refers only to the equivalence of each unit of a commodity with other units of the same commodity. Fungibility has nothing to do with the ability to exchange one commodity for another different commodity." That does not seem to fit with your use.You say that, "… In business, all process is at best an attempt to describe or control reality.” I disagree. Processes are not an attempt to control reality. That is psychobabble. Processes are an organized series of steps and/or tasks which are used to produce a product or perform a service. Products have Sources and Sinks and consume resources (People, Time, Materials). Their Effectiveness can be defined and measured. Their Efficiency can be defined and measured. A Process does not act within a Reality…A Process is part-and-Parcel to reality.You say that, “…because the context of every client or team is unique.” One of the late Dr. Deming’s Obstacles to Success is the belief in a business that their problems are unique. They are not. Business wastes resources re-inventing wheels and repeating the same mistakes that other businesses make. You go on to say that, “…What ends up repeating is failure.” No! Performing a process correctly does not result in failure. Of course processes must focus on the outcome. Processes must provide corrective feedback. If you have set up a good process then there are adequate feed-back loops and measures so as to enable corrective action if the action varies from the goal.You write that, “…so we can make more informed or enlightened decisions.” No. the goal of a process is not to make enlightened decisions. It is to produce a consistent, repeatable result with minimum variation.But thank you for your different view point. Your expression did cause me to think.