Good Process
The first characteristic of something better is to have a good process, you cannot guarantee that a good process will produce a good result but if you have a bad process you will reduce your chance of success considerably. The reasons are not hard to find, you are likely to be dependent on individuals (survival studies in particular graphicly show that groups make better decisions) and people will not easily commit to proposals (because they haven’t been involved)
World Class business spends a lot of time on process improvement, designing structures and looking for best practice. According to the Boston Consulting Group, 79% of executives say process excellence and optimisation will be “very or extremely important in the future.”
What is a good process then? It is one that:
- Defines the problem to be solved
- Involves the right people in the discovery of the solution,
- Gets agreement to the implementation of the solution
- Measures progress and
- Learns from mistakes and reinforces success.
The bottom line here is that a good process increases the likelihood of a good outcome. I look at who the right people are in the next chapter Vision - Fleshing it Out
So, what do we do in politics? As a broad generalisation - we argue about the solution and hold a competition to form a government to implement it for us. We rarely discuss the process itself nor do we assume that we may need to be involved. We (most of us who are not political activists or party members) put little political capital into getting a good processes in our public services and suffer as a result.