As an organisation grows, the ways of working and business processes that originally worked may become overloaded and start to fail. Business process tangles may also occur when new companies are acquired and have fit their ways of working and culture to those of the host organisation. In practice, and invisible to senior management, subcultures aligned to these old companies may continue to exist and use their own business processes and ways of working.
Tangles may be indicated by general awareness that ‘things aren’t running right’ All those signs below are symptoms of starting to lose control of the business.
- Reduced customer and employee satisfaction.
- Reduced profits due to unexpected costs of overtime, warranties and repairs.
- Insufficient notice is given to key suppliers, resulting in increased costs of materials and resources. the
- Missed delivery dates.
- Process tangles reduced ability to meet special requests or sudden changes.
- Continual firefighting to stay on top of problems reduces work-life balance.
- Organisational responsibilities and authorities are unclear and based on assumptions.
Basically, the fun that was there at start-up stage may now be just a memory. You may be reaching one of the points of crisis and evolution described by Larry E. Greiner. These issues must be resolved before business process improvement can be successful.
