On Process, Technology and Work Design

Two + years on, I am still turning over in my mind this post on process (The End of Process) by Ross Mayfield and the attendant comments.

I have been involved in various aspects of work design in companies for a long time, and one could even say that I am heavily invested in some core beliefs, given that I quit a lucrative and semi-high-profile career fifteen years ago.  I believed that information technology would drastically change the nature of work. The company I worked for – a global HR and organizational effectiveness consulting company – wasn’t, in my opinion, ready to acknowledge the extent of the transformation.

I still believe that, and I still believe many, if not most, companies have not really acknowledged the extent of the change that is possible, or that is now coming thick and fast.

This is a statement that, on its face, appears absurd … companies the world over have expended tens, scores, if not hundreds of millions of dollars on large integrated systems that have required the design of long, large and tightly designed work processes … followed by the pouring of *electronic concrete* over these work processes, in the form of the large integrated systems.

I think that processes are good and useful, leading to the standardization of work and the delivery of increased product and service quality in many instances.

I also think that standardization and the fitting of work process to the requirements of integrated information systems have also led to significant rigidities in the face of boisterous, interacting, demanding individual human beings … rendering all too many of us *prisoners* of some companies’ business processes, whether we are workers who struggle with an internal-to-the-company boa constrictor of exceptions and constraints, or customers who are left to fend with a system that won’t let their needs or desires be met in appropriate or sensible ways.

What companies have not done well is acknowledge or understand that the fundamental responsiveness to customer or emplyee feedback comes from what people have always done well … what they, arguably, are designed to do or what is in their nature to do .. which is:

– ask questions, and seek to understand

– decide together why and how to do something

In effect, these *social processes* have been suppressed or limited by the structures of most sizeable companies, with the attendant rules underpinning reporting relationships, spans of control, delegations of authority. This is, colloquially, why so many people like to complain about *hierarchy* … there are often better ways available, or conditions which no longer suit the bureaucracy which was yesterday’s process answer to yesterday’s conditions, but they are not permitted to enter into play.

These ruminations bring to mind the approach known as Participative Work Design, known mainly to Organizational Development theorists and consultants:

Participative Design was developed in 1971 by Fred and Merrelyn Emery. They developed the method as a faster and more acceptable alternative to the Socio-Technical Systems (STS) approach, where a multi-functional task force redesigns the organisation, usually taking a whole year to do so. A design created in such a way tends to be flawed, because it is based on an incomplete assessment of reality. Also, workers do not have ownership of the design, and this generates resistance to change. And, perhaps most significantly, the organisation’s underlying power structure remains intact.

Whereas STS is based on what the Emerys call the ‘bureaucratic design principle’, Participative Design reflects the ‘democratic design principle’. This says that (1) those who have to do the work are in the best position to design the way in which it is structured, (2) effectiveness is greatly improved when teams take responsibility for controlling their own work, and (3) the organisation increases its flexibility and responsiveness when people are capable of performing multiple functions and tasks.

The Emerys have also identified six basic conditions that need to be met if people’s work is to be productive and satisfying. There must be:

– Elbow room for decision making
– Opportunities for continuous on-the-job learning
– Sufficient variety
– Mutual support and respect
– Meaningfulness
– A desirable future, not a dead end

The examples of human interactive behaviour while doing *work* are characteristics of the give-and-take of purposeful interaction. Wikis (such as the solution offered by Ross’ company Socialtext) or purpose-designed blogs (for project management, or brainstorming, or collective competitive intelligence, or for wrestling with difficult problems through dissection, analysis and reconstruction of issues … is a social process.

The lightweight, inexpensive, user-friendly tools are now available to let people interact, with each other and with larger, integrated systems .. to integrate social process into more static and more clearly defined work processes.

The nature of work is changing too much, and the spread of easy-to-use inexpensive social software too rapid and far-reaching (and useful) not to attract the attention of hundreds of thousands of managers, professionals and anyone else interested in the nature of work in a world in which we are surrounded by software and information systems.

It has been said  that sociology always trumps technology.

What do you think ? Who else do you know that is contributing to wider and deeper understanding ?

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