Decision Process SpecificationSM A Process for Defining Professional and Managerial Work Processes
Paul M. Konnersman The Konnersman Group 272 Ocean Avenue Marblehead, MA 01945-3730 USA Phone: 781-639-0616 Fax: 781-639-0282 Email:
[email protected]
Presented at the Portland International Conference on Management of Engineering and Technology July 27-31, 1997 Portland, Oregon, USA
All rights reserved. Copyright © 1997 by the Portland International Conference on Management of Engineering and Technology.
Decision Process SpecificationSM A Process for Defining Professional and Managerial Work Processes Paul M. Konnersman The Konnersman Group 272 Ocean Avenue Marblehead, MA 01945-3730 USA tools that have been used to characterize operational work processes fail to capture essential aspects of knowledge work. The primary response to the deficiencies of functionally isolated work has been an emphasis on accomplishing work in multi-functional teams. While the use of teams has great appeal and has addressed many of the concerns, it has detracted from the repeatability of processes. Moreover, the greater emphasis on teams as a way of accomplishing P&MW has also resulted in an explosion of meetings and often increased the elapsed time required. We need a way of characterizing the interdependencies among the work of professionals and managers with sufficient richness that the process is repeatable, independent of when it is done or who is on the team. We also need P&MW processes that are capable of executing in less elapsed time, with less labor and producing output that consistently meets requirements. We need a way to analyze, specify and support work processes that consist of many interdependent decisions, which require collaboration among multiple participants. This is at least part of an answer to two critical problems currently faced by most complex organizations: First, how to get better integration of effort across organizational boundaries and second, how to improve the performance of P&MW, where such performance is measured in terms of productivity, speed and the reliability in producing acceptable output.
Abstract - Process improvement requires specification of process. Conceptual tools used for this purpose have not captured essential aspects of professional and managerial work (P&MW) processes. A process for the specification of P&MW processes is described which models P&MW using several entities—decisions, decision rules, data, and decision roles.
I. REQUIREMENT Knowledge work is assuming increasing importance both in business and in society generally. Value creation moved from farm to small craft collectives; then to the factory floor, and in recent decades at an accelerating pace into offices and laboratories where products are designed, marketing is developed, business plans are made, and proposals are put together. The increasing importance of knowledge work is accompanied by competitive demands for shorter response times, higher quality and lower costs. While gains have been made in manufacturing and clerical operations by exploiting information technology and statistical process management techniques, similar results have not been achieved knowledge work. The professional and managerial work (P&MW) that takes place in complex organizations constitutes a very large and important class of knowledge work. In contrast to the knowledge work of the stereotypical researcher or author, P&MW is virtually always embedded in a complex social fabric. Relatively little of the work of engineers, scientists, product marketing professionals, production planners, forecasters or other managers or professionals can be done in isolation from the work of their colleagues. The traditional approach to the design of P&MW processes was to divide and isolate it within organizational functions. It has resulted in designs that were difficult and expensive to manufacture, marketing plans that were difficult to implement or failed to address critical issues, and pricing that either unwittingly failed to recover costs or drove away profitable business. Effective use of both information technology and statistical process management requires characterization of the process involved with sufficient richness to ensure repeatability of the process over time and with different people. Process instructions and routings provide the basis for repeatability in manufacturing. Written procedures, flow charts and computer programs provide the required repeatability in clerical operations. But the conceptual
II. CONCEPTUAL TOOLS A. Data and Decisions P&MW processes characteristically result, not in products made of wood, steel or plastic, but products that are composed predominately or even entirely of data. Business plans, forecasts, price lists, product designs and specifications, labels, advertisements, computer software, consulting reports, purchase orders, quotations, requests for quotation, and publications of all sorts are typical products of P&MW processes. Many of the outputs of P&MW are complex assemblies of more elemental data. The data assemblies that are produced by P&MW processes, like their physical counterparts, are sometimes built up in stages as subassemblies (e.g., the airframe subsystem design of an aircraft design, the nutritional content section of the food package label, the terms and conditions section of the product quotation). The data assemblies that result from P&MW processes
“Decision Process Specification” is a servicemark of Paul M. Konnersman
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are the product of numerous decisions. More importantly, many of these decisions are logically, and therefore temporally ordered. Just as a computer cannot be assembled before its subassemblies are produced, nor its subassemblies before its components, neither can a business plan or a quotation be assembled without first making the decisions that produce the data from which they are assembled. In the physical work of manufacturing, there are also temporal precedence requirements that involve the transformation of materials, rather than the assembly of components. Raw material must be reduced to powder or a molten state before it can be cast. And it must be cast before it can be machined. Analogously, in P&MW processes, data is sometimes required as the raw material for a decision even though it doesn’t show up as a component of that decision’s result. For example, the decision to label a product either “corrosive” or “non-corrosive” may require a prior determination of the product’s pH. The pH is raw material that is processed, perhaps with other data, by the “Corrosive?” decision, but it does not become a component of the result. Similarly, the number of households owning fewer than two television sets may be data that is required for the “Market Potential?” decision, but it is not assembled into that decision.
individuals if they are to succeed. In the past people were often not aware of the need to work closely with others because organizations used extra resources (e.g., people, inventories, equipment, time, etc.) to decouple the interdependencies. As progressive organizations began to reduce the slack in their organizations, they gained competitive advantage; others had to follow or perish. In most businesses, the elimination of slack resources exposed inadequacies in the organizational infrastructure, such as the inability to adequately integrate and coordinate decision-making across tightly coupled organizational layers and functions. Involving others in decision-making is a way of integrating and coordinating complex organizational activity. The advantages of a more participative decision process include not only better decisions because of better information, but more readily implementable decisions because of the commitment of the participants to carry them out. Nevertheless, the results from involving more people in decision-making have frequently been disappointing. In the ‘70’s, “participative management” was espoused by academics, promoted by consultants, and loudly proclaimed by many managements. The disappointment, if not disillusionment that followed, was of course predictable. Participative decision-making was and is a good idea. However, it is an idea that contains several traps for the unwary. A common trap is the assumption that participation means equality — that everyone participates in the same way and to the same degree. From that assumption flows the further assumption that everyone gets a vote, that the majority rules or that unanimity or consensus must be achieved if a decision is to be made. While there may be situations where such assumptions are appropriate, in most organizational situations they are neither desirable nor realistic.
B. Decision Processes Data required to make a decision is in turn the result of one or more other decisions. Therefore, the decision that requires data is dependent on the decisions that produce the required data. It is not usually appropriate to make a decision until all of the required data is available. Therefore, an understanding of decision interdependencies based on the data they produce and the data they require, provides a basis for both routing data and triggering decision situations. That is, send data to all decisions requiring it, and trigger a decision when all of its required data have been received. Each decision may be thought of as an “atomic,” or elemental decision process — taking required data and processing it to produce a data result. The decisions that make up P&MW processes are related to other decisions by virtue of their need for data resulting from earlier decisions. P&MW processes may therefore be seen as networks of atomic decision processes that convert data to a desired output. This network of interrelated decisions linked by data elements provides one of the two main structures needed for modeling P&MW processes. The other required structure addresses the common need to involve a number of people in at least some, if not most, of these atomic decision processes.
D. Decision Roles & Responsibilities A structure is needed for successful participative decision-making that explicitly recognizes the different reasons for participation and the different capacities in which participants can be expected to contribute. It has proven useful to distinguish five decision roles, namely: Decision Manager, Consultee, Approver, Inspector, and Informee. The Decision Manager plays the central role that has traditionally been associated with the term “decision maker,” choosing from among two or more possible options. However, the role also carries critical additional responsibilities. The Decision Manager must manage the decision process and take responsibility for implementation of the decision. Our paradigm of the decision maker has been profoundly influenced by our experience of decision-making as a solitary, rather than a group process. The term “Decision Manager” has been deliberately chosen to help break the paradigm's hold on our thinking -to emphasize responsibility for the conduct of the decision process rather than the mere selection of an alternative.
C. Participation in Decision-Making There is widespread recognition that the decisions made and actions taken in a complex organization frequently require contributions and commitments from many
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Our Decision Manager is responsible for both the choice and the process of choosing. The role of a Consultee is to provide either expertise or commitment of resources needed for successful implementation. A Consultee has a right to the opportunity to influence the Decision Manager’s choice, not a right to veto that choice. Note that while the Decision Manager is obligated to consult designated Consultees, he may also consult anyone else that he wishes to consult. The consultation process, which is managed by the Decision Manager, may take any of several forms at his discretion. In decision situations that require more than two or three Consultees, or that are new, unclear or complex, the Decision Manager may find it appropriate to bring the Consultees together for one or more face-to-face meetings. This differs from common “team” practice in having more thoughtfully selected attendees, more explicitly delineated and defined attendee roles, and more precisely focused agendas. Where the number of Consultees is few, or the decision straight forward, face-toface meetings may be unnecessary. The only requirement is that the Consultees feel that the chosen means of communications provides an adequate opportunity to influence the Decision Manager’s choice. An Approver’s role is (1) to prevent organizationally intolerable outcomes that might result from a decision made without the benefit of some expertise that the Approver has, and that is not otherwise available to the Decision Manager, or (2) to assure that the decision has not been unduly influenced by the parochial interests of the Decision Manager to the detriment of the organization. The Approver role is like the Consultee role with two important differences. The Approver has veto power (i.e., he must be satisfied with the decision result as well as the process) and the Approver does not participate fully in the deliberations that take place before the decision. It i s desirable for the Approver to be informed about the progress and content of lengthy and complex deliberations as they go on, rather than being informed only at their conclusion. However, the Approver’s full participation in the pre-decision deliberations would severely undermine the role of the Decision Manager, since the Approver would essentially be taking on the role of Decision Manager. An Informee’s role is to make subsequent decisions and perform subsequent tasks in a way that is consistent with the decision made. While an Informee’s participation in the deliberations leading up to the decision is not useful, his or her failure to participate in carrying out the decision may seriously undermine the implementation. For example, in most organizations it would not be useful to include the payroll clerk in decisions regarding the size of salaries and bonuses to be awarded. But failure to inform the clerk of the result of such decision once it has been made, renders the decision moot. The Inspector’s role is to ensure that the result of a decision conforms to established specifications. In many organizations, individuals who are called “approvers” are often merely inspectors. These so-called “approvers” are
checking to see that others have done what they were supposed to have done — that is, that the result of a decision conforms to some set of specifications. For example, a lawyer may check to see that the copyright and trademark notices have been properly displayed. A marketing manager may verify that the artist has used the correct colors. This is a different role than the Approver’s role. If the requirements for approval can be made entirely clear then they should be implemented as policy to which the Decision Manager is required to adhere. But when the requirements are fully established, or could be, the socalled “approver” is simply checking to see that they have indeed been met. Unlike the Approver’s role, the Inspector’s role could be delegated to any conscientious person. The five decision roles and their respective responsibilities are summarized in Table I. E. Other Roles. Two other roles are essential to the effective execution of decision processes — Project Manager and Process Manager. These roles are broader than individual decisions. Both are concerned with all of the decisions that comprise a decision process. The Project Manager is responsible for managing the progress of individual projects through the decision process; for seeing that a project’s progress is not unduly delayed by a shortage of resources or a communication failure, that resources are responsibly applied to the needs of the project, and that the project meets all requirements expected of it. Project management software incorporating PERT and CPM techniques and Monte Carlo simulation are among the important tools used by Project Managers. In contrast to the Project Manager’s project-specific focus, the Process Manager is responsible for the overall performance of the process. He should be concerned with individual projects that flow through the process only as an indication of how the process is functioning and should not be responsible for taking any action on behalf of a specific project. Rather, the Process Manager is responsible for specifying the process and assuring that it is capable of meeting the demands that it will be expected to meet. In addition, the Process Manager is responsible for seeing that the process is executed as planned — that it is operating in a state of statistical control, and when it does not, that appropriate investigations are made and actions taken to return it to a state of control [3]. The Process Manager is also responsible for the continuous improvement of the process to meet the escalations in demands that will be made. The Process Manager’s core tools include statistical sampling and control charting, design of experiments, computer-based simulation, and process capability analysis. In most organizations it is possible to identify individuals who play the Project Manager role in important P&MW processes, although they may be responsible for only a small portion of what is identified here as their responsibility. Seldom, if ever, does one find anyone
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TABLE I DECISION ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES R OLE NAME
Decision Manager
Consultee
Approver
Inspector
Informee
R OLE
Manage the decision process, make the decision and take responsibility for its implementation.
Provide expertise required to make a good decision or the commitment of resources needed for its successful implementation. (Cannot veto.) Prevent organizationally intolerable outcomes and assure that the decision has not been unduly influenced by the parochial interests of the Decision Manager to the detriment of the organization. (Can veto.) Ensure that the result of the decision conforms to the established specifications for the decision result. (Can reject.) Make subsequent decisions and perform subsequent tasks in a manner that is consistent with it.
R ESPONSIBLE TO…
R ESPONSIBLE FOR…
The Organization
Providing a timely, efficient and effective decision-making and implementation process.
Consultees
Providing an opportunity to influence the decision before it is made.
Approvers
Submitting the decision for approval after it has been made, but before any commitment is made to implementation.
Informees
Providing timely notification of the decision made, after it has been made.
The Organization
Contributing expertise and resources which will improve the decision or its implementation.
Decision Manager
Adhering to the decision process, providing Decision Manager with relevant expertise, taking responsibility for influencing and accepting the result when the opportunity to influence has been provided.
The Organization
Assuring that the Decision Manager has not made a decision that favors parochial interests at the expense of the organization's welfare or that will expose the organization to unacceptable risk.
Decision Manager
Making the requirements for decision approval as clear and as specific as possible, before the decision process begins , and providing timely notification of approval or disapproval with the reasons for such disapproval.
The Organization
Assuring that the decision result conforms to all established specifications.
Decision Manager
Assuring that the Decision Manager is aware of the result specifications before the decision is made and informing the Decision Manager of the inspection results (including the reasons for any failure to pass inspection) as soon as possible after the decision has been made.
The Organization
Making all subsequent decisions and performing all subsequent tasks in a manner that is consistent with the decision made.
playing the Process Manager role defined here for P&MW processes. To the extent that it is done at all, it is done episodically, usually only after serious shortcomings have become critical, and usually by outside consultants. In the absence of effective process management and with parttime, inadequately trained Project Managers, project management usually degenerates into the most basic project expediting.
change. Ideally, decision 1, together with decisions 2 and 3 will be adopted as policies that apply to more than a single process. Therefore, the Decision Manager for these three decisions should be someone with authority that spans all of the processes that it is intended to cover (e.g., V.P. -Org Process). Decisions 4 through 7 are specific to the target process, so the Process Manager would be the appropriate Decision Manager. The most appropriate Decision Manager for each of the other five Process Specification Decisions would usually be the Decision Manager of the subject decision. For example, if one of the decisions identified in Decision 5, Required Decisions, is the decision “Product Name,” and the Decision Manager for “Product Name” identified in Decision 6 is the Marketing Manager, then the Marketing Manager would be the Decision Manager of decisions 8 through 12 with respect to the decision “Product Name.”
III. APPLYING THE TOOLS A. Preparation for Process Specification The first step of Decision Process Specification SM is to identify the target process, the Process Manager, and the decisions that need to be made in the course of specifying the process. (The process of specifying a decision process is itself a decision process and we are applying the process recursively.) Table II provides a list of twelve such decisions together with their respective scopes and a suggested Decision Manager for each of them. Decision 1, Decision Role & Responsibility Specifications, has been addressed in this paper and a prototype offered in Table I. It is, nevertheless, a decision that needs to be made, even if just to adopt the specification offered here without
B. Process Specification The actual specification of the process begins by identifying the process outputs. Each output has data content and one or more templates that specify how the content is to be displayed. The outputs are then analyzed
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TABLE I I DECISION PROCESS S PECIFICATION DECISIONS #
DECISION
S COPE
DECISION M ANAGER
1
Decision Role & Responsibility Specifications
Organization
VP - Org Processes
2
Process Specification Template
Organization
VP - Org Processes
3
Decision Specification Template
Organization
VP - Org Processes
4
Process Output(s)
Process
Process Manager
5
Required Decisions
Process
Process Manager
6
Decision Manager & Applicability
Process
Process Manager
7
Process Specification
Process
Process Manager
8
Decision Description, Scope & Applicability
Decision
Decision Manager
9
Decision Data Requirements & Applicability
Decision
Decision Manager
10
Decision Rules & Applicability
Decision
Decision Manager
11
Other Decision Participants, Their Roles & Applicability
Decision
Decision Manager
12
Decision Specification
Decision
Decision Manager
into subassemblies and components, each of which is the result of a decision. For each decisions, specify a Decision Manager, the information required to make the decision, and any decision rules which generate an acceptable decision result. Finally, make a preliminary determination of who, if anyone, should participate in each decision as either a Consultee, an Approver, an Inspector or an Informee.
the number of individuals in any of the other roles. The nature of the decision and the stake of the participant should determine who is or is not in those roles. In each of these roles we need to strive for a delicate balance — as many as are necessary but no more than that. Individuals should be Consultees if they have expertise that can be expected to contribute significantly to the quality of the decision or, if they control resources whose commitment is important to the successful implementation of the decision, and might withhold funds, people, facilities, information or personal energy if they did not understand or agree with the decision. Note that the contribution that justifies someone's being a Consultee is expertise rather than information. Information can be communicated by routine or special reporting. The benefit of expertise, on the other hand, can be obtained only through the participation of the expert. For example, certain financial information may be relevant to the decision, but that alone would not be grounds for making a financial expert a Consultee. If financial expertise is needed to interpret financial information or if it is not clear just what financial information may be relevant or how it might be obtained, then make someone with that expertise a Consultee. On the other hand, if the prospective Consultee’s contribution can be specified in advance, then make the prospective Consultee the Decision Manager of a new decision that produces the required data, and add that data to the required inputs of the first decision, rather than making the financial expert a Consultee. In most large organizations the requirement for formal approvals is quite common. Even those who are required to get approvals are inclined to accept the need for them without question. Many people are uncomfortable, if not incredulous, at the suggestion that most of these approvals should be eliminated. But the need for decision approvals
C. Assigning Decision Roles A single Decision Manager should have responsibility for both a decision’s process and the successful implementation of the decision. Having no Decision Manager or having more than one usually results in confusion, diffused responsibility and difficulty in establishing accountability for results. An apparent need for multiple Decision Managers can usually be avoided by breaking the decision at issue into component decisions, or by making all but one of the candidates Approvers rather than Decision Managers . For example, selecting a product’s trademark has significant elements that are the province of marketing experts and others that are the province of legal experts. In some situations it may seem appropriate to have the product manager and the trademark attorney be Co-Decision Managers. While this may work, a more robust solution would be to make the product manager the Decision Manager of the “desired trademark” and the “trademark to be used” decisions and make the attorney the Decision Manager of the “acceptable trademarks” decision. Alternatively, either one of them might be the Decision Manager of the “trademark” decision if the other is made an Approver of that decision. While there should be one, and only one, Decision Manager for each decision, there is no such constraint on
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is de-motivating, time consuming and organizationally debilitating. Approvals are often a way of coping with organizational ignorance and with mismatches between the interests of the organization and the interests of the Decision Manager. Wherever possible, the need for approvals should be completely eliminated. Many times approvals are substitutes for explicit statements of policy. The development of explicit policy is often seen by senior managers as a significant investment which does not provide a justifiable payoff. The alternative is to continue to spend time and delay results by revisiting the policy decision over and over in the guise of an approval. Another means of eliminating approvals is to address the need for an Approver’s intervention to assure nonparochial decisions. This can be accomplished by changing the Decision Manager's incentives in such a way that he will be encouraged to balance conflicting interests in a manner that is consistent with the interests of the organization. It is important in this regard not to focus exclusively on adding financial rewards for desired behaviors, as is so often done. Not only financial incentives, but intrinsic and social incentives should be considered as well. And needed leverage may be gained by adding disincentives for undesired behavior as well as incentives for desired behavior. Nor should the possibility of r e m o v i n g incentives for undesired behaviors, or disincentives for desired behaviors be overlooked [4]. Inspectors, too, should be used sparingly. If a decision result that does not meet specification can have serious consequences, and there is an unacceptable likelihood of such failure, then an inspection is certainly in order. But this should be viewed as a temporary expedient, rather than an acceptable way of doing business. It is no different than “inspecting in” quality by sorting good product from bad at the end of the assembly line. The solution is the same as in the production of physical goods — improve the process so that it will produce conforming results with an acceptable likelihood and then eliminate inspection.
The resulting work process model addresses two critical problems currently faced by most complex organizations: First, how to get better integration of effort across organizational boundaries and second, how to improve the performance of P&MW in terms of productivity, speed and the reliability in producing acceptable output. The proposed modeling process uses several familiar entities — decisions, decision rules and data — and another less familiar set of entities — decision roles. The work process model produced using these entities captures important aspects of the individual knowledge base, converting it to an organizational asset which outlives the incumbency of particular individuals in particular roles. Transfer of knowledge from individuals to organizational infrastructure enables more rapid qualification of new incumbents and more rapid and reliable modification of the work process, thereby increasing organizational adaptability. The work process model can be used to direct and guide the behavior of the participants in the work process by using it as the central element in a computer- and communications-based infrastructure to support the work process. This should reduce the amount of time spent in meetings while improving the quality of interaction among decision participants and reducing the elapsed time for process completion. Repeatable execution made possible by a model-directed process is the basis for employing statistically-based process management tools.
IV. SUMMARY
[1] R. Beckhard and R. T. Harris, O r g a n i z a t i o n a l Transitions: Managing Complex Change. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1977. [2] J. Galbraith, Designing Complex Organizations , Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1973. [3] P. M. Konnersman, “Process management,” unpublished. [4] P.M. Konnersman, “Empowerment: What people need in order to perform,” unpublished. [5] J. D. Liptak, “Responsibility charting: A methods tool,” NACA Bulletin, May 1956.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The approach described here has evolved in the author’s consulting practice from similar techniques described by others [1] [2] [5]. Kenneth H. Smith, Vice President - Marketing, Diamond Home Services, Inc., provided substantial encouragement and very constructive criticism during the development of the work reported here. REFERENCES
The increasing importance of knowledge work is accompanied by competitive demands for shorter response times, higher quality and lower costs. While gains have been made in manufacturing and clerical operations by exploiting information technology and statistical process management techniques, similar results have not been achieved knowledge work. Significant improvement of knowledge work requires specification of the work process for repeatability over time and changing participants. Professional and managerial work (P&MW), an important class of knowledge work, can be usefully modeled as networks of interdependent decisions which are logically and temporally ordered. As this network of decisions typically requires the participation of multiple individuals, a structure is required to explicitly recognize the different reasons for participation and the different capacities in which individuals are expected to contribute. 7
