TOC Deja Vu: Review of BPM and the Balanced Scorecard
One of the biggest "sins" in academia is when your audience points out that your new theory has actually been around for several years. Such is the case with Smith's Business Process Management and the Balanced Scorecard. When I was reading pages 78 through 80, I suddenly realized that Smith was actually presenting the Drum-Buffer-Rope of TOC as if it was his newly formed insight. I quickly checked the index and could not find a mention of Goldratt or TOC. Thus, Smith's insights are quite familiar to TOC practitioners who already have several tools for process improvement.
The rest of the book is an exposition on strategy maps and the Balanced Scorecard. It's a lucid explanation but, other than putting the new process in the process perspective, there isn't a real link between the process improvement and the Balanced Scorecard. This is a great topic but it needs more exploration than given here.
Business Processes: My Latest Obsession
I'm in the process of reading Business Process Management and the Balanced Scorecard after serendipitously finding it on the library shelf. I became interested in business process management after reading Smith and Fingar's response to Carr's Harvard Business Review article on why IT doesn't matter. Smith and Fingar's argument that business processes were the new source of competitive advantage convinced me to delve deeper into the topic.
To me, process management and project management are the two sides of a successful business. In fact, I am working on a thought paper about the four Ps of the 21st enterprise: processes, projects, programs, and portfolios. And the connection between all of the Ps is alignment. I'm still looking for the grand unified theory of management.
The Myth of the Generation Gap
I have sat through several presentations on the generations and what each group (Boomers, Gen Xers, Millenials) supposedly values and how they differ in motivation and work ethic. Even though the presentation is cloaked in academic language and the presenter is careful not to give value judgments, the usual message is that each succeeding generation feels an unwarranted sense of entitlement and wants more for doing less.
Thankfully someone finally did the obvious research and actually studied what each generation valued. Jennifer Deal, in Retiring the Generation Gap, surveyed 3,200 people from 2000 to 2005 on their values, perceptions of respect, and what they wanted from their leaders. As she found, essentially all the generations value the same things, they all want respect, and they want trustworthy leaders who will coach them. Where the generations differ is how they perceive being respected.
This is a very readable book and has some great information especially for training managers and for corporate leaders and managers. What I especially like is that this research is another example of how a widely-accepted management myth is disproved through actual research. As I have written before (Hard Truths), there are numerous management myths that entire consulting industries have been built around. What is especially damaging about the generation gap myth is that it causes unnecessary workplace conflict and decreases understanding and trust among employees and their leaders. As Deal writes, it is time to retire the generation gap.
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