Process thinking requires us to view businesses as a set of processes rather than a collection of departments that each perform a function.
Nowadays, it is widely used by business of any industry to better design, track, and optimize business processes. That doesn’t mean that we have to do away with functional departments altogether. But to follow process thinking, we view the work depart ments do in a different way. A department can’t exist in isolation. It receives inputs from other areas of the business, and it provides outputs that other departments must use to get the process or task finished.
In practical terms, each department or individual is a contributor to one or more business processes. So, instead of managing departments, we should be managing entire processes. A process might flow through a series of teams or departments each with its own set of skills, but the whole purpose of each one is to get results, and results are what matters.
Jut why is process thinking so important in business? Let’s analyze the benefits of process thinking and the pitfalls it can help us to overcome.
Top Benefits of Process Thinking
The benefits that can be realized through process thinking are motivating a great many businesses to adopt it. Here are a few of the top reasons why businesses are moving away from traditional, function-based thinking:
Process Thinking Eliminates “Silos”
When we focus only on the work that each department does, we often lose sight of the real goals we want to reach when performing activities. The people who work in each department don’t communicate effectively with other departments that are involved in the processes their work contributes to. As a result, the overall process suffers.
Process thinking encourages managers on every level to focus on the complete business process and their contribution to its ultimate goal.
Process Thinking Helps Us to Solve Complex Challenges
Do you remember studying math at school? You’d get a problem that looked impossible to solve. But if you knew which steps to follow, you’d eventually reach the correct answer. Each step was relatively simple, even when the overall problem was complicated. If the answer you eventually gave was incorrect, it was because you had made an error in one of the steps (the process) or had skipped one by mistake.
Business processes work in much the same way. Even if you’ve never really thought about your business as a set of processes before, you have processes happening all the time. How effective are they?
As with our school math problems, looking for answers before following a series of steps gives us a result that is sheer guesswork. The best way to overcome challenges is to begin at the start of a process and carefully evaluate each step until we reach its end.
What challenges does your company face? Customer complaints, borderline profitability, quality issues, missed deadlines, and more can be resolved using process thinking.
Process Thinking Boosts Efficiency and Profitability
Once we start looking at processes as a path to a goal, we’re sure to uncover wastes. We might find that we’re duplicating tasks. We may have physical and human resources that we aren’t utilizing as efficiently as we could. There could be bottlenecks where work piles up and gets held up until the responsible person or team can get around to it.
When processes flow smoothly, transitioning from one step to the next without holdups or waiting time, we’re able to do more with the same resources we had before. With each output costing us less, we stand to make better profits.
Process Thinking Helps Us to Improve Quality
Quality shouldn’t be variable. We want consistency: a predictable result that matches set parameters. A business owner needs to know that the outcome of a process reliably and consistently produces a certain level of quality. Once again, the key lies in process thinking.
If we have a process that always works, in the same way, every time we run it, we should get a predictable result. Variation is your enemy when it comes to quality. Uniformity is your friend. Process thinking allows you to declare war on unpredictability and variation.
Process Thinking Allows for Process Ownership and Continuous Improvement
Have you ever experienced the disadvantages of a fully departmentalized business? Each department did its job and what happened next was somebody else’s problem.
Sometimes, you must have become frustrated because a department that passed on work to you wasn’t giving you what you needed to get your work done properly. And when any problem arose, each department pointed the finger at another one to apportion blame.
The problem was that nobody owned the whole process. If you adopt process thinking, you can also assign ownership of entire processes to people. When people “own” or are responsible for something, they take greater pride in it. They want to make it work. There is no “somebody else’s problem” that they can simply ignore. Buck-passing and blame-shifting are a thing of the past.
That means that process thinking has led you to a point where continuous process improvement is on the cards. Your process owners will help you to achieve this because they have a genuine desire to see their processes thrive.
Process Thinking Helps You to Move from “Acceptable” to “Excellent”
Your business might be doing fine just as it is, but if you aren’t applying process thinking yet, you could be missing out on a golden opportunity to transform an OK business into a great one.
When you implement continuous improvement through careful analysis of processes, there will be ongoing change – and it will be changed for the better. The quest for excellence requires process excellence to succeed. After all, your company’s reputation depends on achieving results efficiently.
Process Thinking Gives You a Competitive Edge
Clients love working with efficient businesses. The respect you’ll earn thanks to your effective business processes will help you to build customer loyalty. When your business undertakes a process, it achieves a predictably good outcome.
When there are problems or issues, you examine the process and deal with the area where the anomaly arose. If you do so effectively, you prevent the same error from recurring.
If your competitors aren’t already doing the same thing or are doing so less effectively than you are, you will gain a competitive advantage.
How to Make the Change to Process Thinking
Making the shift to process thinking may look like hard work, but you can make it easier with a little help from technology. Business process management software like Tallyfy helps you to capture processes, standardize them, run them, monitor them, evaluate them, and improve them.
Start by capturing your existing processes. Look for any unnecessary steps, gaps or grey areas, and attend to them first. Monitor processes in real time from the comfort of your office. A glance at your dashboard will tell you whether things are ticking over well.
You have the tools, and you can appoint a team of process owners to help you do the thinking, but the decision-making still rests with you. Keep your finger on the pulse to ensure that all processes contribute to your business’s strategic direction.
Once you’re satisfied with any process, it can become automated. Tallyfy allocates and tracks tasks, managers and supervisors can easily follow them and intervene if necessary, and you can be confident of achieving predictably good results.
Switching to process thinking makes sense. It will lead to change, but smart change leads to business improvement. Is it time you switched to process thinking?
Process Thinking and Business Process Management
So you might be wondering, how does process thinking fit in with business process management? One is an old discipline that began at the same time thinking could have. The other, is a discipline that came about during the past century with the aim of improving business as we know it.
Well, you could very well say there is no BPM without process thinking. It necessary you to think in processes if you want to implement business process management methodologies in your current business processes. If all you are seeing are different departments that carry out their own isolated tasks, then your business is likely to fail.
If however, you look at your entire business as a chain where each link (business process) needs to hold the other one together then you can easily figure out which links of the are note efficient. In other words, you can easily track your business processes and find bottlenecks that require fixing/improving.
There are various benefits to implementing process thinking in your life and in business. Too many benefits for us to list in one post. However, if you want to read more on process thinking, improving business processes, workflow management, workflow automation, and more, you can find plenty of resources on our blog. I included some of the links to make it easier for you.
And if you are already onboard and excited about business process management, then you can look into workflow management systems and business process management software. These tools can really make process thinking a lot easier than it seems.
One such tool is Tallyfy. It’s business process mangement software that helps you get rid of clutter, automate tasks and processes. And what’s best, it will easily make you think in processes. The software does it for you and you don’t need to worry about business process bottlenecks, or inefficiencies. Say goodbye to clutter. Give Tallyfy a try, it’s free!
And when you do, let us know what you think about it!
Related Questions
What is an example of process thinking?
Imagine you’re baking a cake. Process thinking involves focusing on each step: gathering ingredients, measuring, mixing, and baking. Instead of fixating on the final product, you pay attention to how each action contributes to the outcome. This approach helps identify areas for improvement, like finding a more efficient mixing technique or adjusting baking time for better results.
What is the meaning of processing thinking?
Processing thinking, often called process thinking, is a mindset that focuses on the journey rather than just the destination. It involves understanding how things work, breaking down complex tasks into smaller steps, and continuously looking for ways to improve. This approach encourages people to see the big picture while also appreciating the details that make up the whole.
Why is process thinking important?
Process thinking is crucial because it helps us understand how things work and how to make them better. It’s like having x-ray vision for problem-solving. By focusing on the steps involved in any task or system, we can spot inefficiencies, reduce errors, and find creative solutions. This approach leads to smarter decision-making, improved quality, and often, surprising innovations that might be missed when only looking at end results.
What is the process thinking in business?
In business, process thinking is like being a detective and an architect rolled into one. It involves mapping out how work gets done, from start to finish. Companies use this approach to streamline operations, cut costs, and boost quality. For example, a coffee shop might use process thinking to redesign their ordering system, making it faster and more accurate. This mindset helps businesses stay competitive by constantly evolving and improving how they work.
What is the difference between process and outcome thinking?
Process thinking and outcome thinking are like two sides of the same coin. Outcome thinking zeroes in on the end result – did we win the game? Did we hit our sales target? Process thinking, on the other hand, explores how we played the game or how we approached sales. While outcome thinking can be motivating, process thinking often leads to more sustainable improvements and learning. It’s the difference between celebrating a lucky shot and perfecting your technique.
What is the difference between system thinking and process thinking?
System thinking and process thinking are close cousins, but they’re not identical twins. System thinking takes a bird’s-eye view, looking at how different parts interact within a larger whole. Process thinking zooms in on the specific steps within a system. For example, system thinking might examine how a city’s transportation network functions overall, while process thinking would focus on improving the bus route scheduling process. Both approaches are valuable and often work hand in hand to solve complex problems.
What are the pros and cons of Process Thinking?
Process thinking is a powerful tool, but it’s not without its trade-offs. On the plus side, it promotes efficiency, quality improvement, and a deeper understanding of how things work. It can lead to innovative solutions and help organizations adapt to change. However, an overemphasis on process can sometimes lead to rigidity or “analysis paralysis.” It might also overlook the importance of intuition or creativity in certain situations. The key is to use process thinking as a valuable lens, but not the only one, when approaching challenges and opportunities.
