Organizational changes can be difficult—staff may be apprehensive, resistant, or they may not fully understand the goals of the changes. When it comes to organizational changes, business process mapping is important to document the current and future state to build comprehensive requirements. But it can also be an important tool for generating enthusiasm among stakeholders and subject matter experts (SMEs) to create buy-in.
Business process mapping sessions are most successful when the team involved includes the ground-level staff who are completing the work. These staff best understand how the process really works, including current issues and opportunities for improvement. It’s crucial to include representation from all stakeholder groups involved in the business process.
Typically, our consultants bring together a group of staff who are involved in the business process at different points. netlogx then facilitates a session to document the current state “As-Is” business process and gather feedback on issues and opportunities within the current process.
Session attendees may not regularly work together, and the business process mapping sessions provide a new avenue for communication. It’s also educational for staff as they may not always understand the downstream impacts of workarounds, bad data, etc. It’s in these sessions that people discover a disconnect between policy and operations. Policy staff may not understand operational challenges to implementing a new policy, and operations staff may not understand the intent of the new policy.
Business process mapping sessions offer the opportunity to promote communication between different groups of stakeholders, allowing staff at multiple levels to work together and collaboratively identify opportunities for improvement. The ability to provide input into the future state of the organization’s processes generates buy-in, enthusiasm, and momentum. Staff involved in business process mapping sessions often become champions of the project among their coworkers.
Business process mapping sessions hold significant value from a team-building standpoint as they spend time working together. They build and strengthen relationships among staff who will be key to implementing organizational changes.
