Have you heard of Management by Objectives?  It was first popularized by Peter Drucker in the 1950’s.  This is basic goal setting, where you pick (or agree on with your employees) your objectives and then drive everyone to the result.  Results are important, but so is keeping control of your organization.  The problem with Management by Objectives is that we don’t want to become overly focused on the goals to the point where we begin to ignore the environment around us.  What’s better than Management by Objectives?

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As the Quality Manager you are responsible for Quality Management System (QMS) compliance.  In other words, you must manage all company-wide, quality policies, procedures, processes, programs, and practices, to assure the company of continuous conformance with appropriate standards and regulations.  In a smaller company you may also be the document control manager, quality auditor, and process improvement specialist.

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According to the Institute of Internal Auditors (IIA), an effective system of internal controls helps ensure that our organizational processes are functioning properly, that our financial information is reliable, and that we’re in compliance with applicable regulations. Businesses primarily implement internal controls systems to protect themselves from internal fraud and abuse, while many do so with regulatory or standards compliance in mind.

It is interesting to note that, in many cases, the internal control system at many companies consists of volumes of instruction-like procedures that document activities. If a company is taking the time and effort to develop a procedure-based financial control system, it’s worth the additional effort it takes to:

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Human resource management is performed in parallel with short- and long-term strategic plans.  This requires you to tie together your strategic management planning with your business process development in order to lead to successful people management in line with your business plans.

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You’ve written a new procedure.  Your procedure review identified completeness, correctness, and subject matter applicability.  You feel you’ve caught your procedure writing errors and the procedure’s ready to go…but go where?  How do you determine if your new procedure is working?

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Your process is not living up to expectations, so you’ve decided to implement standard operating procedures (SOP) to improve process consistency, compliance, and effectiveness.  However, that project is stalled: employees are not buying into your proposed changes, and management is growing impatient.

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Business and organizational development is about business process change: not as in “process change – the event”, but “process change – the journey“.  Your business processes change in response to market forces, competition, regulations, customer demand, the economy, culture, personal beliefs, and many other factors.  The question isn’t about what is causing the business process changes — we know your business processes are going to change — the question is…

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In our series on process maps which wraps up next week, the maps we have looked at are descriptive. They help us capture and display information about the current state.  Each map depicts the entire process, though from different angles.  For example, swim lane maps stress roles, responsibilities, and hand-off points, whereas document maps list documents and records generated throughout a process.

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You have probably heard of the term “Process Map” or a process flow chart (the terms process map and process flow chart are used interchangeably) to describe a process. But what exactly is a process map anyway? Are there different types of process maps? Are all process maps created equal? We’ll try to answer some of these questions by taking a look at seven different types of process maps and how they are used to describe a process. After all, the foundation of all businesses is a common set of core processes.

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Change management is at the heart of programs like ITIL, lean, ISO, or six sigma.  Change and improvement needs to occur on a regular basis, but it does not happen by accident.  It takes commitment from top management.  How does top management show their commitment?

Two ways – budget and a show!  That’s right you need to fuel innovation for change and improvement and budgets are what top management understand. 

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