Personal Maturity is about reaching one's full potential. Process Maturity is about Leadership working to optimize both their people's & processes' potential.
Maturity is about reaching one's full potential. Process Maturity is about leadership's engagement in the development of their people's & processes' by fully defining, understanding, and delivering the expected customer outputs (i.e. value) in a profitable, timely, and quality manner. #Leadership
What's in it for me?
If you are a leader in the organization, then you are responsible for delivering value from a process -- you are the process owner. As a process owner you likely manage or coordinate people associated with the process -- so you are a people leader too. As a good people leader you have a responsibility to develop your people so they can effectively do their job. And, as a good business leader you have a fiduciary responsibility to the business owners (i.e. stockholders or owners) to deliver process value cost effectively. So, it is your responsibility to improve and mature your process and develop your people to reach their full potential. #PeopleLeader #BusinessLeader
It is your responsibility to mature your processes and develop your people to reach their full potential.
What is Process Maturity?
There are four process maturity levels: Ad-hoc, Stabilized, Standardized, and Optimizing. As a process matures, its capability increases -- delivering more value, at a lower cost, with higher quality, in a shorter period of time. (More on this later.) Below is more detail about each level. #ProcessMaturity
Ad hoc:
By definition, ad hoc means for a single purpose. This is how most processes start. We might need to deliver a report, implement a system, or train a class. These all start as one-off situations where we do our best to deliver quick, at a low cost, with high quality. Often times however, the process starts repeating and evolving, so the process must mature beyond this state. If not, outputs will inconsistently meet unsettled expectations due to more exception handling. When people describe a lot of "firefighting" it's often because the process has not evolved much from when it was first performed. #AdhocProcess
A common example is the dish washing process. While this is something we all do everyday, most of us have never matured this process beyond ad hoc. We don't have a defined process nor track any metrics about activity. And, there is no process owner monitoring activity or hold anyone accountable when it's not done (except in my house where it's eventually my fault. LOL)
Descriptions of "firefighting" often means your process is ad hoc (i.e. immature).
Stabilized:
As the process first matures, it has a defined and documented process with trained resources. This makes the process easily repeatable as resources and work items follow the same basic process. Internal expectations are met and reliable basic process measures are tracked. #StabilizedProcess
Standardized: At this next level of maturity all resources are using the identified and agreed upon best methods to perform specialized work which results in a more predicable output. And, these outputs meet external expectations set with the customer while additional data provides deeper insights into process performance. #StandardizedProcess
Optimizing: Process excellence is a journey, not a destination. So optimizing process requires on-going monitoring to continually identify and deploy improvement opportunities to meet the customer's evolving requirements. Outputs will meet/exceed expectations. Low value work is continually eliminated or automated. Meanwhile personnel capabilities are enhanced via training and technology. #OptimizedProcess
A personal example of an Optimizing process (and maybe for you too) is watching my parents manage their finances. My dad (CFO) continually monitors activities to ensure timely & accurate updates while also increasing automatic update efficiencies. Meanwhile my Mom (CEO) insists on monthly reviews on their financial status and continually challenges their status quo looking for opportunities and minimizing risks -- that my dad then researches and implements.
So, what maturity level is your process?
Now that you have read the 4 levels of maturity above. In a future post, you can read about the 5 traits within each maturity level. So, now you can envision a 5 row, 4 column, 20 grid Process Maturity Matrix. Yep, we've got that! You can evaluate your own process maturity.
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