BPM: Culture Eats Strategy for Lunch

This is one those posts where I find it hard articulating the point I’d like to make:
There currently isn’t a BPM solution that solves organisational culture issues

BPM solves the problem of manual work automation nicely, it solves business process issues nicely, it even solves compliance, governance, auditing and process visibility nicely.

But one of the business pains BPM hits again and again is organisational culture changes, and BPM doesn’t have a full solution for this.

Gartner’s Elise Olding advised embeding organizational change techniques in all BPM project work. “Use BPM efforts to design and implement the organizational liquidity (and metrics) to enable the appropriate level of organizational agility”

But for someone who manages BPM projects for a living, I find myself uneasy trying to embed organizational change techniques.
I understand the need… I understand the value… its the “how” that I struggle with.

Forrester’s Connie Moore articulated this problem nicely in her post on Culture Eats Strategy for Lunch

For a long time, we’ve steered away from these “soft” topics because they are so squishy and hard to get your arms around. But the trouble in pinning this topic down only underscores the fact that business change management is a tough issue for business process professionals, particularly if they are driving business transformation or business process improvement initiatives throughout their organizations. And it is so true: You can set a strategic direction, envision a new future, transform your processes, and so forth, but your existing culture can completely eat your new strategy for lunch. To overcome this very real problem, you have to take concrete actions to change the culture. And that’s a tall order for any business process executive.

The easy way out would be to say “Human nature is difficult”, “It’s all about education”, “You need special people to deal with it”, “BPM software vendors can’t help here and shouldn’t try to intervene”

It’s easy to say that BPM software cannot help solve culture organisational issues. Untrue. We just haven’t invented the right software solution yet to help address this issue.
It’s easy to say that BPM implementers shouldn’t be used to help solve culture organisational issues. I disagree.
It’s easy to say that BPM is about business processes and shouldn’t deal with organisational culture. I disagree. We would be just sticking our head in the sand.

BPM currently provides a partial solution to the organisation’s business pain.
It’s a good solution, but incomplete.

It might take time, but until someone comes up with a solution for organisational culture issues – BPM will be just be another organisational band-aid.