Process Technology and People have to be in balance

A recent reply to a comment on a forum that presense of business processes were negative in a business promoted this response.

Process technology and people have to be in balance.

However processes are vital, without them you have high variability non managed customer experiences and high costs. Processes are as much important assets as people.

What we see so often is badly designed standardisation resulting in some of the appaling customer experiences that we have to deal with today as customers. So just because process design is done badly is no reason to deny the value of process management.

Any business above a certain size can't function professionally without some process framework a SME can, to some degree, and that is why small compapies often do so well in a competative environment based on service; however get beyond a certain size and the cottage industry approach tends to fall apart, unfortunately.

The people issue is interesting. I have worked in failing organisations with no process or very little and they always promote "our people" as assets the result is people running around in mad chaos making things happen due to lack of process and creating a culture of indispensible people - prima donnas and heroes. In these companies costs are out of control and the inefficiencies errors and customer service are highly varied. They rush from one crisis to the next. In a market where day rates and salaries have plunged and supply of people is high people, subject to training of course, are a fairly easily replaced.

Businesses say people are their main asset and perhaps they are but most fail to treat their employees and engage them correctly. Corporate mantra of HR is that people are our assets but the reality of this doesn't often manefest in how folks are treated.

HR often believe what they wnat to believe in a group think manner - is "our assets are our our people" a corporate buzz-phrase?