Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

All organizations have management processes. Do they matter?

All organizations have management processes. Some organizations codify them, teach them, spread them, proclaim them, and even sometimes use them.

Do things management processes, i.e., “the way we do things around here,” matter? Of course they do.

And sometimes they don’t. Sometimes the personnel, the idea, the breakthrough is so good that everything works. The organization succeeds wildly beyond everyone’s imagination. Everyone gets rich and famous and (sometimes even) lives happily ever after.

Then someone goes back and claims, “Well, you have to understand that we created the environment or infrastructure or something-or-other that enabled our success. Let me explain.”

Then that someone writes a book and publishes posters and sells all that stuff and holds big-dollar seminars exhorting others to adopt their wonderful wonderfulness.

And really, it was simply a breakthrough idea that was 99.9% of everything.

Beware the organization that fails at a product but produces a process.

Also beware the organization that succeeds at a product but produces a process.

Same thing, just a different first step.