"Business Process Reengineering". "Continuous Process improvement". "Business Process Management". "Business/Technology Process Development". "Process versus Functional View".

It's been over 60 years since Operations Research formalized the engineering of industrial processes, over 20 years since Total Quality Management revolutionized manufacturing processes, and over 12 years since Business Process Re-engineering launched the current focus on business processes. The word "process" has become firmly entrenched in the business vocabulary. Process improvement is recognized as a key driver of innovation and competitiveness. Process development skills are in high demand and short supply.

Yet the overall adoption of process-oriented methods, tools and organizational structures is still relatively low, and regularly faces misunderstanding and resistance.

This article starts with the assumption that the process-orientation in business is highly valuable, and that its increase is desirable from a strictly business point of view. The article then focuses on this question:

How can the adoption and use of process-oriented methods, tools and structures be expanded and accelerated?

For discussion purposes, we define "process" in a broad way, to mean any of: a pre-defined set of actions, steps or instructions a network of events that are interconnected by causes and effects an area of activity of any kind

The process orientation in business has two sides: external and internal. The external side of "process" includes process improvement methods, software, work products and so on, as well as process-oriented organizational interactions. The internal side of "process" includes what is often referred to as the "process view".

The central activity in the "process view" is the human mental activity of learning, applying and communicating mental models of processes. This is a universal human mental activity that is used in everything from making a grocery list to managing a corporate takeover. It is a fundamental component of human intelligence that plays a major role in governing individual human behavior.

We refer to this activity using several terms, including "mental process modeling", "process learning", and "process thinking".

So one approach to increasing the use of process-oriented structures and tools is to increase the contribution of the "process view". This is the approach that is taken for the remainder of this article.

Before we go further, let's look at some potential objections to this approach.

Objection: This mental activity seems like an abstraction, far removed from concrete business results.

Response: This is a very real activity, which is occuring in everyone, consciously, subconsciously and unconsciously, most of the time. People would simply not function without using mental models of processes. More directly, none of the external methods, tools and structures for the process orientation in business could be operated without this mental activity.

This activity is in fact the basis for all of the business benefits that surround the process orientation, including business process improvement results, business/technology project results, increased innovation and competitiveness, and so on. Without the mental activity of making and using mental models of processes, none of these things occur.

Objection: While these abilities are important, they are mostly used only in particular disciplines, such as six sigma, systems engineering, process improvement, and so on. So the focus should be on increasing these abilities in those disciplines.

Response: In fact, the benefits of the process orientation are greatest where the process view is mostly widely distributed. If the rest of the organization has little or no process view, the specialized areas will not be able to communicate process ideas and put process changes into effect. Widely distributed process thinking capabilities mean that more people can contribute to process improvement, and that process innovations can be understood, accepted and implemented more quickly.

Also, while process modeling, learning and thinking are most visible in the disciplines listed above, they are actually used in many more organizational areas, including those shown below:

	Project Management			Customer Solutions Development
	Systems Engineering & Integration			Complex Selling & Customer Support
	Business Process Management (BPM)			Business Process Outsourcing
	Business / IT Alignment			Audit
	Strategic Planning			Team Building
	Mergers and Acquisitions			Organization Change Management
	Total Quality Management / Six Sigma			Manufacturing Process Engineering
	Product Lifecycle Management			Legal
	Negotiation			General planning
	General problem solving			General decision making

	Job requirements specification			Recruiting and Interviewing
	Training courseware development			Training on specific process content
	Job performance measurement			Job coaching
	Career management			Executive team building

Objection: Even if these mental activities are real and important, there is nothing that can be done about them, except to hire people who have strong natural process thinking abilities.

Response: Process modeling, learning and thinking capability actually have several sources besides native ability. These sources include general management experience, on-the-job training in process-oriented disciplines, the use of process-oriented methods and applications, and formal training in process modeling and development.

Increasing Process Modeling, Learning and Thinking Capability

So what can be done to increase overall process modeling, learning and thinking capability in an organization (or an individual)?

A key to answering this question is recognizing that process thinking, like other forms of thinking, needs a language to do that thinking in. For example, accountants have the specialized language of accounting, musicians have the specialized language of music, and electrical engineers have the specialized language of electrical circuitry.

The same is true of people who have increased process thinking capabilities: they have specialized lanaguages for modeling, learning and thinking about processes, for example, use of the terms "input", "process", and "output".

There are several points that are important to take note of here.

Increased capability in the language of a specialized area is directly related to increased effectiveness in that area. Being able to "think" in accounting, music or electrical circuitry is what makes people effective at accounting, music or electrical engineering. The people who have the best language skills in those specialties are typically the most effective, and typically the most highly rewarded. The same is true for people in process-oriented specialties.

Languages need external forms of expression so that they can extend internal mental modeling, and so that they can be used to communicate. This applies to process languages as well.

A key to process thinking skills is that process thinking is largely dependent on visual process mapping. So a major component of any process language has to be visual process maps and diagrams.

People who currently have well-developed process thinking skills are for the most part using those skills in one particular content area, such as financial processes, or computer hardware processes, or environmental processes. So in fact there has never been a singular human process language, in the same way that there are (relatively) singular languages for accounting, music or electrical engineering. ("Standards" for process oriented software tools are starting to emerge, however, these are essentially machine languages.)

Objection: This again all seems abstract and not actionable.

Reponse: It's quite concrete. External results from the process orientation in business are entirely dependent on human mental process modeling, learning and thinking. Process modeling, learning and thinking capability in turn need the support of process languages.

Anyone in a competitive race to increased process-oriented benefits will quickly have to deal with these realities. Anyone attempting to hire a business process analyst probably already knows this.

And, it's highly actionable. Millions of people every year learn many specialized languages through advanced degrees, continuing education, corporate training and on-the-job experience. The challenge is to find the languages and the training paths.

Critical Success Factors for an Effective, Widely Distributable
Process Thinking Language

So the solution to increasing overall process modeling, learning and thinking capability in an organization, and therefore increasing the business benefits of the process orientation, would appear to be to increase organizational process language capabilities. On the way to that conclusion, we've accumulated a set of critical success factors for such a language. Those are summarized as follows.

	Reliable and effective at process modeling, learning, thinking and development
	Fast and easy to learn, apply and use
	Widely applicable and highly scalable
	Produces process development work products and human understanding
	Translates rapidly across different knowledge areas, cultures and vernacular languages