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Process Leadership: The Strength to Change

In Article 4 of our Process Management Series, we made the connection between Process and Skills, based on the notion that being able to do things effectively is fundamental to good management. This article deals with the fundamental role that a Process Leader can play in managing needed change in the organization.
RANA Development was among the very first organizations to train Process Facilitators at the basic, advanced and practitioner levels; we have provided our graduates with the Process Knowledge, Skills and Motivation to provide expert service to their various organizations or clients. We have tracked our success rate and have found that our effective Facilitators have actually developed into more senior internal consultants – Process Leaders.
Process Leaders provide valuable process guidance in Facilitating groups moving through a task. They also become resident supporters of deploying processes as key assets. Thus, the Process Leader can provide Learning to the organization by replicating process knowledge and skills and promoting the necessary motivation (the Knowledge, Skills, Motivation continuum) to drive performance. The Process Leader acts in a Coaching role to help people deal with the processes they own inside the organization. Process Leaders also work in an Advising role; they provide on-site and punctual counsel in how best to integrate the organization’s management processes into a seamless whole. The related workflows inherit this integration. To cap things off, the Process Leader is well versed in Designing processes or assessing, redesigning and improving processes to benefit the organization and its process owners.
The five roles played by the Process Leader as outlined above set that person apart as best suited to help the organization undergo the inevitable changes that take place over time in response to social, economic and market pressures. We are not shy in stating that, “Process Leaders provide the strength to change.”
No one is saying that the Process Leader is more important than those content experts and specialists who make up “the stuff” of the organization. In fact, we know that in order for an organization made up of fallible human beings to work properly, there needs to be a correct balance of content (the What) and process (the How). It makes sense, then, that people who have a sense of how to do things will be instrumental in helping those who know what to do.
While we celebrate those Process Leaders who climb the organizational ladder as a result of their enhanced perspective on how to do things, we also celebrate others who have chosen to remain at the line levels of the organization. It is possible, even desirable, to have Process Leaders at different levels of the organization who share the same skills. RANA’s Process Leadership Development Program provides learning opportunities at all levels to people who have decided to treat Process as a priority asset.

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