Emerson - Management based on process

Read the one article of McKinsey Quaterly publication, an inverview with Emerson retired Chairman and CEO, Mr. Chuck Knight.

Emerson's management philosophy is prcess based. The benifits include:

1 Get rid of beurocracy.

2 Get rid of politics

3 Set up clear accountability

Comments:

People has tendency to do things in a chaotic randomly. Most of the people don't like discipline. Yes, discipline. A good word. People usually don't like discipline. Process is the realization of discipline. For huge company, discipline is very important. Thus, a process should be in place to guide the information flow. Yes. Process is the tool to create the channel of imformation flow.

In Emerson, the business planning is a process. Quarterly business planning meeting is a process.

Somehow this is like Toyota's management philosophy. But Toyota is more related with the technical site of the operation. Toyota relentlessly pursue Kaizen to impove the process of operation. Yes. By continuously adjusting the process and making impovement to it, it always have life in it. But once implemented, it has to be rigidly followed.

Process is able to get rid of ambiguity, thus, gets rid of politics. Ambiguity is the root of politics. If the people has several choices to make, they will have opportunities to operate based on local benifits. "Do you/me a favor" kind of thing will happen.

For day to day operation, it's very important that each routine work has a process in place. Service model is adopted between departments. Process is used to guide the activities of intra and inter-departments.

But the important thing is the process should be updated continuously like Toyota does. The ultimate purpose is to improve efficiency. Toyota's way balances process and innovation.

The barrier of implement of the process based management is the cost in short term. It takes time and effort to implement a process.