Process excellence is a work culture that builds process improvement into everything that it does. It requires treating processes the same way you would treat any other business asset. This begins by taking ownership of processes within the business. Individuals across the organization should be involved in identifying, codifying, reviewing, and updating processes—an approach called process mapping.
Traditionally, improving business processes was the remit of a small team of “process improvement consultants”. In an organization of 5,000 people, for instance, a team of five or six people would work in isolation on individual projects. They would create process maps to highlight which processes should be improved. With no input from the wider team, these would then be filed away and, perhaps, never seen again.
There is a better approach. Process excellence does not treat process improvement as an end-goal, but as an ongoing pursuit. There’s always room to improve processes, because new technologies, new methodologies, and new ways of working are always being developed. If your business doesn’t adapt yet your competitors do, you will soon find that you’ve fallen behind the pack.
Ongoing process improvement is a vital part of staying competitive in today’s ever-changing, highly disruptive world of business – and the only way to do this is to build a culture of process excellence that gets everyone involved.