Busting Improvement Myths
Parmonia- Apr 24
- 6 min read
Updated: Apr 25
We address some common misconceptions about business process reengineering (BPR), continuous improvement (CI), and process improvement (PI) that clients and colleagues often raise when working in transformation. In other words, we aim to clarify what people believe occurs when these strategies and initiatives are put into action.
We invite you to join us in challenging these misconceptions and proposing new and better solutions based on those we have co-designed and experienced with clients and colleagues.
We do not need to work on the organisational culture.
When a need for CI, BPR, or PI is detected, we usually meet with key individuals and then move directly to the fieldwork, completing it with various documents and sometimes following up with recommendations, audits, or monitoring to continue improving. In most cases, the needs are met and remain static without adequate adoption.
What we generally do is first understand leadership styles, individual, team, and strategic objectives, shared and individual values, and the culture and subcultures within the organisation; all of this becomes valuable information about the impact of any detected need. This is the first step in any improvement initiative, regardless of its magnitude.
We do not need to communicate better or differently.
From who communicates, when, and how, including the different channels, the words used, and the tone, are rarely considered relevant, critical, or important.
What we do in practice is encourage conversations about how they communicate, the most common and frequent words they use, which ones they don't, which communications habits they hold, the diverse cultures of the people who work in the organization, and the story behind each person, as all of this and more has a positive or negative impact on daily interactions, especially during times of change.
It is important to develop, maintain, and improve Cultural Intelligence and Intercultural Communication skills, along with other areas such as facilitation.
We do not need to perform new or additional training.
People must understand and accept that things change, and we must improve or change "XYZ", and they should do so because we tell them to.
Changes, whatever they may be, have a direct impact on organisational, team, and individual performance, and therefore must be supported by timely training; not at the last minute, as is the case in reality, condensed into one or two days, with unexplained documentation that not everyone has access to.
At each stage, communication is complemented by training on the new features or improvements, feedback, and the delivery of short, well-timed training or facilitation sessions to enable understanding, adoption, and increased performance at all levels.
We do not need to involve all the stakeholders or employees.
It's very common for the first meetings to be with specific people. What happens in practice is that not all people directly or indirectly impacted are included, so when the analysis stages begin, for example, the reason for the meeting is unknown. Fear, mistrust, uncertainty, etc. arise.
In practice, we design meetings, mentoring, facilitation, and training sessions, with the right people at each stage, especially those directly involved and impacted, as they are the ones who can provide valuable information on how to improve a process or provide feedback on an idea, etc.
This is complemented by personalised and transparent communication about why and how things are done.
Lack of clear objectives or a north star.
People understand that change is necessary, but they often don't know why. Therefore, starting without specific and measurable goals leads to scattered efforts and unclear results, turning a major and critical change into an uncertain business, causing fatigue and resistance in people.
We ask: Why are you making the change and implementing it? How do you envision the outcomes? Who will be there to lead, support, and enhance the transformation, which is critical for success, scaling, and sustainability?
Neglecting Change Management.
Acting without a minimal plan and simply going somewhere willy-nilly is one of the causes of failure.
It's important to consider a simple and flexible timeline, through experimentation, that includes meetings, facilitation, coaching, testing, delivery, due diligence, communication, people, and improvements.
Overlooking the Current State (“As-Is” Processes).
This is very common, and no one seems to care about the current state; it's one of the main sources of real-world information about bottlenecks, deliveries, interactions (or lack thereof), RACI, affected stakeholders, risks, and technology. Therefore, focusing solely on the desired future state without understanding existing workflows can lead to misalignment and missed opportunities.
Both are important for identifying and implementing improvements, and one of the technologies that enables us to do so is through simulation.
Automating broken processes.
We have seen too much automation in tasks that don't require it, as well as many automation rules accompanied by numerous exceptions, resulting in a loss of confidence in its capabilities and in how technology serves people and the organisation. By implementing automation and "staying ahead," processes are automated for no reason, without analysing or improving the underlying process. Doing so simply increases process inefficiency and also fails to identify where to innovate.
The first step is to identify core, supporting, and unnecessary processes, including their purpose and reasons for existence. Next, analyse these processes to gather information that will provide insights into what is critical, what is secondary, what can be eliminated, and what can be improved.
Lack of ongoing measurement and accountability.
Organisations often overlook KPIs related to process initiatives and fail to assess them, nor do they consider OKRs, SMART, or FAST objectives. This oversight leads to inconsistent progress monitoring, resulting in fewer improvements and innovations.
Working with our clients, we co-design KPIs, OKRs, and risks during the planning and implementation phases. At the same time, we define the RACI and Process Owners to align direction, measures, and responsibilities with the purpose.
Trying to reengineer everything at once.
It's quite common to redesign several processes simultaneously because people think it's best to do everything at once. If you continue with this approach, you end up increasing the workload, uncertainty, risks, and rejection of the proposed changes.
It's about one step at a time, one reengineering at a time (which, in reality, doesn't always redefine the business 100%). It's a long-term yet continuous implementation.
Overreliance on documentation.
Very classic. Most of the time, organisations believe that process initiatives or changes simply involve documenting and making it pretty in Miro, Google Suite, or SharePoint to comply with international standards or regulations.
The important thing about documentation is to focus on the actual operational change, which is constantly being improved and evolving, understanding that it goes hand in hand with the changes and that its practical impact is simple and direct.
Now, let's analyse in detail the misconceptions and ideas surrounding each type of initiative.
Misconceptions about PI implementations:
It is a one-time event.
Many people believe that process improvement is a one-time project with a clear end. Contrary to popular belief, it is an ongoing process that requires constant monitoring and adaptation, especially when it is already embedded in the organisational culture and values.
It’s only for large or manufacturing businesses.
PI is often mistakenly seen as relevant only to big corporations or manufacturing. In reality, organisations of all sizes and industries can benefit from it, whether the company provides services and/or sells products.
PI requires expensive technology.
It is assumed that improvement requires large investments in new technology. In reality, it simply involves analysing how the organisation uses technology to determine whether to increase, decrease, or maintain its use to achieve significant results.
Improvement means more work.
In practice, it's about simplifying tasks, eliminating redundancies, and reducing unnecessary efforts. It's also essential to consider how many improvement initiatives the organisation is leading simultaneously.
Misconceptions about BPR implementations:
BPR is only for large corporations
Small and medium-sized businesses can benefit from BPR to remain competitive and agile. We've worked with smaller clients reengineering their entire financial processes, as well as with larger companies redesigning their L2C processes.
BPR is a one-time initiative.
BPR is sometimes considered a drastic restructuring. In reality, it's much more than that; it's about evolving core business functions and, therefore, scaling, innovating, and becoming sustainable.
It requires a deeper evaluation to continue making improvements and being mindful of implementing one initiative at a time.
BPR guarantees immediate results.
It does not. When implementing business process re-engineering within a company, the goal is to work long-term, taking into account that small deliveries will be made throughout the initiative. The implementation is continually experimenting and improving what is being done to achieve significant and sustainable results. The initial results are perceived by both internal and external customers.
A few misconceptions about CI implementations:
Lean/CI is only for Manufacturing.
Lean and CI principles, standards, and frameworks have broad applications beyond manufacturing. We have been applying them to our customers from IT, fintech, healthcare, aesthetics, legal, hospitality, leisure and travel, and government, among others.
CI is a series of projects, not a Culture.
This is one of the most common and most difficult to overcome. Viewing it as a set of isolated projects, rather than as a mindset or culture, limits its effectiveness.
True CI requires integrating improvement into daily work and organisational values, turning it into healthy, scalable, and sustainable habits.
The underlying reasoning is that when faced with changes, and especially when implementing process improvements, an internal element inherent to the organisation emerges first. This element must be brought to the forefront, discussed, and respectfully presented to those leading the organisation and the changes. We work with people for people.
From this perspective, we have repeatedly worked with our clients through Organisational Coaching, co-designing spaces for facilitation and emotional well-being, and focusing on people-centred design.
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