Process Leaders: is the solution? (II)

The quality of the process will depend greately upon the process leadership and the process team. But, how to select a good Process Leader that improves our chance of a good business process management? Well, the Process Leader selection should be like the hiring process. It implies:

• - To define the competencies required for the job
• - To have a clear job and role description
• - To link process KPIs and targets to their rewards and compensation
• - To have candidates for the job, and go through a selection process

Let´s discuss about the competencies. Competencies are understood as the measurable or observable knowledge, skills, abilities, and behaviors (KSABs) critical to successful job performance. There are several classification of competencies, but we can use this one for our purpose:

Knowledge competencies - practical or theoretical understanding of subjects.

Skill and abilities competencies - natural or learned capacities to perform acts.

Behavorial competencies - patterns of action or conduct.

After that, you should define the level of competency the Process Leader (PL) should have, based on the following scale proposed by Dreyfus and Dreyfus:

1. Novice: Rule-based behaviour, strongly limited and inflexible
2. Experienced Beginner: Incorporates aspects of the situation
3. Practitioner: Acting consciously from long-term goals and plans
4. Knowledgeable practitioner: Sees the situation as a whole and acts from personal conviction
5. Expert: Has an intuitive understanding of the situation and zooms in on the central aspects

I would not like to elaborate about Competency-based management, so let´s start with these basic definitions. From my expertise, the core competencies a PL must have and he/she should be between the "Knowledgeable practitioner" and "Expert" are:

- Knowlege Competencies

• Process theory and concepts. It is critical. If not, will lose his/her leadership. PL main role is to "teach" these concepts to the team.
• Process methods and tools (like Lead Six Sigma, BPMN)
• Process repository basics. It means, where and how the processes will be documented and maintaned.
• Deep knowledge of the end-to-end process that will be under his/her leadership. PL must suggest improvement based on this knowledge.
• Process measurement and control (KPI, targets, actions, etc.).

- Skill and abilities competencies

• Leadership, and be recognized in the organization as a leader
• Team work, good at working in a team and getting the most from it.
• Excellent communicator. Presentation skills. 
• Change  management skills.
• Program and project management skills.

- Behavorial competencies

• Customer focus
• Alignment to the business strategy
• Focus on service, cost and effectiveness/efficiency
• Thinking in process, instead of function or silos
• Looking for a holistic view of the benefits (look for a greater good)
• Looking for consensus