Are you a process driven or people driven organization? Before we answer that let us understand the difference between the two. A process driven organization works on the concept that is exactly opposite to people driven organizations. Process driven organization relies on the principle of corporate law that treats as a separate entity which has come in to existence. It believes that the existence of the organisation is not bound by the limitations of time, skill and its workforce.
Today most growing organisations follows the process approach. It is because they are not bound by human limitations that they can operate across geographies. Such organizations grow in terms of knowledge, operations and efficiency irrespective of the influence of its workforce.
It must also be understood that the organization is not independent of its workforce. Otherwise any big organization today would be mega machine and not a mega company. They need the efforts and energy of the workforce to get the work done as well as the basic mental intelligence to follow the best practices.
A process organization must be a learning organization. It should have the following abilities:
- Ability to change as per the environment: A process driven organization will have a process to regularly examine the environment and adapt the changes in the environment. They will consult experts to examine the environment and plan it into a model. This model will then become a process.
- Identify threats and opportunities: There should be a process to identify the threats and opportunities from the competitor, technology and the market dynamics. Both the factors internal and external should be documented to create the model. It is a challenge here to create a model with the experts and then apply it to the workforce.
- Agility: The process of adaption should be quick and nimble. Many organizations are missing the opportunity to top because of their arrogance or ignorance. This is also because the examination of environment and acceptance of change is again people driven. To make is process driven is the biggest challenge.
- Manage the growth: It is said that it is always easy to replicate processes. But as the business grows the processes become complex and few of them become self-opposing. As a result, business is divided into functions. So, the processes will also have to ensure that they manage the complexity to make the organization more process driven and less people driven.
So let us work towards making an organization which has unending succession and is not tied by constraints of time, skill and workforce mortality.
As W. Edwards Deming quoted – “A bad system will beat a good person every time”, let us work towards building a process driven environment instead of people driven.
Written & Compiled By Faber Mayuri Pandya
