Nina Lotfi

The long-terms success of your BPR is based on the duration of ongoing monitoring of performance and the ability to stand up various feedback loops to drive continuous improvements

A common pitfall is involving only senior executives and top performers in the process mapping exercise. While their input is valuable, neglecting to include a diverse range of stakeholders, especially more of those who perform the process, can lead to an incomplete or inaccurate representation of the process. Ensure that your process mapping team includes a mix of roles, levels, and performance levels to capture a comprehensive view of the process.

In the early stages, the focus should be on establishing a shared understanding of the goals and objectives. Crafting a clear, compelling vision that aligns with the organization's overall strategy and effectively communicating it to all stakeholders. This serves as the foundation for all subsequent BPR efforts. Significant organizational changes can be unsettling and lead to a lack of buy-in. Deploying clear communication, employee training, and stakeholder involvement (early and often at all levels) is crucial for overcoming resistance to change!

Team norms play a crucial role alongside these tools. A stream of live notifications and tagging can be overwhelming when a collaborator is occupied in meetings throughout the workday. It's essential to establish norms for how tools are used to allow a collaborator to join 'mid-movie'.

The diversity of needs has to be evaluated; focus groups and experimentation can help uncover levels of digital comfort and level of detail desired and practical reality to consume one-way communications. Ideally, a tool is selected that provides analytics (email open rates, unique times the video is watched, etc.). Success should be evaluated through the lens of enhanced engagement, transparency, and trust within the team/group.

Tools should be selected based on the problem to be solved. My most commonly used tools are Smartsheet and Trello. Smartsheet combines familiarity with Excel for users with added real-time visualization and messaging capabilities. Status and due date reminders, with the ability to build workflow, reduce the administrative burden. Trello is visually oriented, perfect for varying levels of tech-savviness on the team. It also has notification and reminder capabilities.