{"id":826,"date":"2014-12-29T14:44:12","date_gmt":"2014-12-29T14:44:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.michelgoes.com\/blog\/?p=826"},"modified":"2015-01-05T13:39:10","modified_gmt":"2015-01-05T13:39:10","slug":"are-employees-roles-sufficiently-defined","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.michelgoes.com\/blog\/?p=826","title":{"rendered":"Employees roles and company culture"},"content":{"rendered":"

gaps in processes<\/a>\u2019 I highlighted the fact that unforeseen events (exceptions) are mainly resolved by human actors accepting to address them by temporarily exceeding the strict boundaries of their assigned role, and consequently that a company culture encouraging initiatives is\u00a0essential for proper processes exceptions handling.<\/p>\n

If initiative is key\u00a0for the management of exceptions, complementarily, the normal operation of processes requires precisely defined roles that each process actor – employee or system – has to endorse to carry out efficiently all processes tasks. But what happens when roles are not sufficiently detailed ?<\/p>\n

One potential side effect is that employees have the natural tendency to reshape their assigned role(s) as they see fit from their own stand point. This may lead to the creation of gaps and overlaps of responsibilities hampering the normal processes operation; who does what becomes less clear and the gap between the definition of the processes and the reality of their application increases.<\/p>\n

The gap between the design and the actual functioning of a system[1]<\/sup><\/span><\/a>, a process in this case, is often a fertile ground for anti-patterns[2]<\/sup><\/span><\/a>. Individuals facing the reality of the application of a process have no choice but to compensate for that gap in a way or another but unfortunately rarely in a structured, concerted or documented way.<\/p>\n

Detecting and addressing “reality” gaps is consequently a key point\u00a0to improvement. The ‘detection’ side requires some feedback loop to be put in place; monitoring, audit, KPI’s measurements. The ‘addressing’ side is more complex as it highly\u00a0depends on specific causes and context of gaps creation.\u00a0For example regarding\u00a0efficient process management we have seen that:<\/p>\n