Problem is People or Process or Technology

I would start with my favorite quote “Technology is best when it brings people & process together”.

Yes, the technology always is effective only when it adapts to the organization process efficiently and especially along with people acceptance who can adapt to use that.

As part of my professional career in the IT Software Industry as an Architect, a big part of my job is to understand the Organization process by collaborating with the people who are part of that process and derive the solution how to make the process to be more effective by way of Implementing the right technologies and solve their current problems & Challenges. And in such Implementation, as in any other thing, I deal with a different set of people who may have a different view of such process such as some may like automation, some may like manual as they habituated with that, also some may like a hybrid approach, so on., I use to identify different solutions and various ways to work out one common approach for successful implementation. My favorite approach in dealing with such a situation is breaking down the process which I find that the ultimate answer lies in tracing an answer to its origins. Irrespective of any industry or profession, I believe solving any other problem is no different Whether you are a programmer troubleshooting a bug, a doctor diagnosing an illness... it's always logic that leads the way. That's what I will try to do in this article, arguing a matter we all experience frequently within the organizations we work in, who is to blame when the numbers are not as presumed? when the performance is of low productivity? Should we condemn the vendor who implemented or the systems or the process or the people who use that.

In a modern organization with more than 20 people working in it, what you can find are lots of systems and processes. They are the structure around which the other parts of our work are framed and without them, there would be chaos. The people will always be the first and best asset. Obviously, without people, the business process can’t function. And for the commonly asked question: What’s most important - the people or the process or the systems? the simple answer is all. Certainly, it’s important to have the right people in the right jobs, but I would argue that it is equally important to have the right systems and right process in place.

Now, when the debate starts in adapting such a new process pertain to Automation, Performance, and Quality, leading to any reduction in productivity, who is to be held responsible the people, the process, or the systems? This debate can go on and on, however, in my opinion, I believe a conclusive answer to the riddle does not exist. People and processes are two sides of the same coin.

Still, some managers in the organization assume that most of the organizational problems are caused merely by people. They are the reason why the service level, production standard, or quality measurements are not met, but most of the time I discovered is also the process and the system which is not aligned to the integrated process and paving an opportunity to such human errors and deviation from the process and causing data-related issues in MIS. But normally we tend to connect with people when we see problems at work. It’s human nature that we essentially blame the person closest to the problem. This is called the fundamental attribution error, and it hurts managers and executives because it distracts them from fixing the processes or Systems behind the problem.

Processes and systems, that function poorly or are insufficiently integrated, make it difficult for people to deliver high-quality end products. Systems will always set the performance boundaries and potential limits in any modern organization. They take the lead, processes get updated, and people will need to follow and adapt. And as automation grows more and more in our daily tasks, so does the system responsibility and influence in everything related to performance. Ultimately, rather than putting their effort into measuring and fixing people, the organizations will be acquired to fix the broken processes. The people will join and become partners in creating the vision of the systems with proper training and course along with their acceptance for such training.

I would like also want to showcase somewhat Mark A. Russell presents in of the conference how the process related problems can be overlapped with the people as below,

The Critical failure of the people comes in when only there is a hesitation in understanding and adapting the process which will get keep improving w.r.to various aspects of the business. As per the above theory, its state that only 15% of the people are not getting adapted where others are getting adapted to such new processes as per the guidance given by the organization concerning the various standards such as ITIL, COBIT, TM FORUM, etc., But the key challenges are only when these standard processes are not getting adapted rightly within an organization.

With this example, I wanted to recall another interesting quote from Edward Deming "If you can’t describe what you are doing as a process, you don’t know what you are doing".

Let’s always analyze the problem from its origins rather than starting from the other way round.