BPM: Circling the Poo

I live in a nice neighbourhood, nice houses, nice park, nice people.
Neighbours are considerate. It’s a quite area, tidy, clean, dog-lovers clean up after their dogs.

That’s why I was surprised when walking down the road I suddenly saw dog poo in the middle of the footpath.

The surprising part was that someone had drawn a circle around it using chalk.

Someone had seen it, gone back into their house, brought out chalk and marked it to help people avoid it.
Someone had put in an effort to try to highlight the problem.

Understandably they didn’t want to touch it.
Frustrating. One person was inconsiderate. Another person was considerate but couldn’t solve the problem.
Bottom line: someone is going to get their day ruined (and shoes..)

So why am I telling you this colourful story? (and probably ruining your breakfast)
I’m using it to highlight my topic for this week – BPM limitations

One of the biggest frustrations I have in implementing BPM solutions in organisations – is finding again and again, that BPM is great, but it has it’s limitations.

I sit with the middle management. They tell me what their business pains are.
Most of the business pains we can solve, some not.
A certain team is not pulling their weight, a certain manager is not making decisions, an employee that was been in the company for decades and is not afraid of the bosses…

BPM suites can design and automate processes, simulate and optimise, but can’t enforce.

BPM solutions will highlight the poo, will show and try to eliminate the process bottlenecks. They can even pinpoint the problem.
But BPM cannot clean up the mess. Only the organisation can do that.

(… and sorry for ruining your breakfast..)