Key Points

• Strong leadership is a must for any BPR efforts.
• A good leader can readily allocate resources to a BPR project as needed.
• Allowing space to communicate ideas is crucial for any BPR initiatives you’re undertaking.

What role does leadership play in your BPR efforts? BPR is a drastic and often massive change to business processes. The concept of a clean slate isn’t just touted about, but followed through on. As such, it has its own sort of demands to consider when undergoing a BPR initiative. Leadership plays a key role in these efforts, as without strong leadership at the helm, they are destined to fail.

So, today, we’re looking at what exactly leadership does during BPR efforts. Some of this is quite evident, after all, leadership is a guiding force for any business endeavor. However, some of these parts aren’t exactly talked about when considering the drastic shift BPR requires in the first place.

Understanding BPR

BPR, or business process reengineering, is a radical effort businesses can undertake to see drastic improvements in efficiency, performance, and efficacy. Unlike your usual process improvement efforts, BPR isn’t focused entirely on the notion of marginal or incremental improvements. Instead, things are essentially started over again from scratch, resulting in a new take on a process.

There is generally a fair bit of planning and analysis that goes into any BPR efforts, much like you’d expect some data analysis in a DMAIC cycle. When properly implemented, you’ve got processes that are generally more efficient and less resource-intensive, saving time and money in the long run. BPR isn’t a single effort, but rather a continuous one.

A handy method of implementing BPR relies on the approach for the early stages of the complete redesign of a process, then utilizing something like Six Sigma or Lean Six Sigma to start improving the process after necessary data has been gathered.

The Role of Leadership in BPR Efforts

Leadership is vital in any business, but it plays a special role in BPR efforts. If you don’t have strong leadership to champion and guide the entire effort, it can lead to utter disaster. Instead, you will want a driven, ambitious leadership at the helm to see things through. Rather than dealing in abstraction, let’s look more at some of the concrete reasoning behind this thinking.

Sponsorship

One of the most important things leadership does in BPR efforts is to effectively act as a sponsor for the entire thing. This means taking the time to allocate resources, funds, and personnel to effectively take on the initiative. Further, they’re championing the initiative, ensuring that it receives the proper guidance and priority needed to succeed.

The busy work behind leadership is a vital thing when looking at BPR efforts. You need someone in the background handling the paperwork, assigning team members, making sure resources are in order, and so forth. Without a strong leader to navigate these sorts of things, there is little hope that a BPR effort is going to be effective in the first place.

Communication and Navigating Change

BPR is a drastic change, no matter how you slice it. Change can often be a difficult thing to navigate for any business. What leadership does in this scenario is aid in communicating the ideals and directives behind the BPR efforts, while also taking the necessary steps to navigate the change. Communication is vital for any business, but poor communication is going to kill a BPR initiative. By setting forth and giving clear and concise information about why the project is necessary and how it aligns with your organization’s ethos, you’re laying the groundwork for future success.

Additionally, change management is going to be paramount for a drastic change like any BPR efforts. Leaders might be well qualified for handling change, but they might also look to dedicated change managers to plan and implement their efforts. We’ve discussed the impact of microcultures on change in a business, but you don’t want things fouling up before the BPR project is completed.

Strategic Alignment

Any project can seem somewhat nebulous without truly strong communication behind it. One area where you can put your money where you mouth is relates entirely to the strategic need behind a change. While we discussed the importance of communication in the previous point, strong leadership is necessary to make sure the project fully aligns with your goals and strategy.

It isn’t enough to have the why behind a project, but also some more particulars. You want to know what these BPR efforts are going to look like when they’re finished, while also hewing closer to your business’s objectives. BPR is about fundamentally transforming a process, rather than making small incremental changes that might not even align with your cultural goals.

Accountability

Someone has to take ownership of any project. This serves to give accountability and transparency in the event of something going south on a given project. However, it also serves to celebrate the victories and successes of any team while going through BPR efforts. As such, you want to empower teams, but hold them accountable at the same time. This also applies to any leadership that is helping to navigate the BPR efforts in the first place.

Milestones and other key metrics have to be met, and that is worth celebrating when crossing the finish line. That said, you also want to have someone who can provide answers when something doesn’t work out as intended.

Cultural Shifts

BPR is going to change the makeup of your organizational culture. That’s just a fact. Cultural shifts can be painful. However, this is where leadership is going to play another key role. Teams should ably be provided all the materials and resources they need to get things done. This could be something like instructional material, or it could simply just be a space to vent frustrations and give frank feedback.

Trying to maintain the status quo isn’t going to serve your BPR efforts at all. The culture is going to change, let it, and make sure you’ve given your managers enough space to do their jobs to make navigating such drastic changes easier.

Other Useful Tools and Concepts

Looking for some other tips and tricks to get your day going? You might want to take a closer look at some of the most common challenges in BPR implementation and how to avoid them. BPR isn’t a smooth process sometimes, and requires care and attention to properly implement.

Additionally, you might also want to consider our piece on how to measure the ROI of your Six Sigma implementation. We provide some handy metrics and practical strategies on how to measure exactly how your Six Sigma implementation is faring.

Conclusion

Leadership plays a vital role in BPR efforts, as it does in any business approach. Make sure you’ve got strong leaders who can help to navigate the changes, while also empowering their teams. BPR is a big shift, but it can be a shift for the better when you’ve got the right leadership behind it.

The image featured at the top of this post is ©Juice Flair/Shutterstock.com.