Young businesses see process as a means to do more with less. More mature businesses see process as a way to control many moving parts to avoid chaos. Both valid reasons to develop processes to drive growth and maintain control over costs. But at what time does the process create the exact conditions they were meant to correct?
With the ability to collect data about more things and in more ways than could have ever been dreamed of not too long ago, more pressure is put on managers to use data exclusively to measure success. Once, common sense was all that existed to evaluate a scenario and determine causality between multiple factors and from this, understand what strategic decision needed to be made to be successful. The measurement for this success was business growth, which could come in many forms. Now, the ubiquitous data barrage has changed how decisions are made and how success is measured.
Einstein’s “Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted” has become cliché. Yet, this is often ignored. With so much data available, managers and decision makers are afraid to rely on other forms of interpretation and find that living in the data is safe. They can always point to the data to justify their actions even if the outcome is a disaster. “It’s the data’s fault”. The overwhelming stream of data and the need for more rigid processes become one in the same.
The speed of business causes many decision makers to find themselves in over their head. Managing people and dealing with all the touch points those people impact creates a need for tighter control. This manifest itself into a process for everything…including how to create process. If a manager can fall back on the process and not have to deal with the many one-off scenarios that impact the business, then they can stay in their safe zone.
At the core of many processes is the ability to grab data points readily available. From this, the process must reverse engineer this data and then develop metrics to show success of the process. Success is limited to only what can be measured by the data and all other inputs are discounted and ignored. At this point, the data rich process becomes a crutch to strategic decision making. The rigidity of the process also becomes a burden on the business. It leaves no alternative way of dealing with unique situations other than to shoehorn them into the process. Common sense would tell you that this cannot work long-term. That is if you were still using common sense.
With the ability to collect data about more things and in more ways than could have ever been dreamed of not too long ago, more pressure is put on managers to use data exclusively to measure success. Once, common sense was all that existed to evaluate a scenario and determine causality between multiple factors and from this, understand what strategic decision needed to be made to be successful. The measurement for this success was business growth, which could come in many forms. Now, the ubiquitous data barrage has changed how decisions are made and how success is measured.
Einstein’s “Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted” has become cliché. Yet, this is often ignored. With so much data available, managers and decision makers are afraid to rely on other forms of interpretation and find that living in the data is safe. They can always point to the data to justify their actions even if the outcome is a disaster. “It’s the data’s fault”. The overwhelming stream of data and the need for more rigid processes become one in the same.
The speed of business causes many decision makers to find themselves in over their head. Managing people and dealing with all the touch points those people impact creates a need for tighter control. This manifest itself into a process for everything…including how to create process. If a manager can fall back on the process and not have to deal with the many one-off scenarios that impact the business, then they can stay in their safe zone.
At the core of many processes is the ability to grab data points readily available. From this, the process must reverse engineer this data and then develop metrics to show success of the process. Success is limited to only what can be measured by the data and all other inputs are discounted and ignored. At this point, the data rich process becomes a crutch to strategic decision making. The rigidity of the process also becomes a burden on the business. It leaves no alternative way of dealing with unique situations other than to shoehorn them into the process. Common sense would tell you that this cannot work long-term. That is if you were still using common sense.