Arnold Consultancy

Although you are not an experienced UXB operative, it falls to you to loosen the last screw fixing the bomb’s cover in place, and to lift it clear of the casing with infinite care to reveal the electronics inside. Amid the flashing lights and the LED display counting the time down ever closer to zero are a dozen wires. They are all different colours, except, crucially for you, none of them is red.

Now what to do? You were counting on there being an obvious, undoubtedly dangerous, blood-red wire, which you could just clip with your pincers, and the countdown would stop. Danger would be averted. But there isn’t. And you haven’t had any training in these devices and you have no idea where the wires come from or go to. You are vaguely aware that they ferry electrons about, but to and from where is anyone’s guess.

You could pick a wire, choosing on the basis of which one looks fattest, or scruffiest, oldest, longest, or perhaps most expensive. And then you could just hope for the best, and snip it.

Then what happens? Who is to say that it won't be ... "Boom!" ?

All because, although the wires were laid out neatly in front of you, you didn't know what function they perform.

When you have successfully “modelled your current processes”, you have pretty much unscrewed the cover and removed it from the casing. You have a neatly laid out diagram of the workings of your company, which will not improve if you do nothing, and, if you do the wrong thing, may just blow up in your face.

The processes may even have names, often describing a part of what your business does, or a departmental function. But unless you know what contribution each of those 'processes' makes to the satisfaction of the stakeholder expectations which directly determine the success or failure of your company, then you can not know where best to make changes. You can not know which wire to snip. Picking the most expensive process, the one which gobbles up a seemingly disproportionate share of resources, is to choose based on a criterion which is totally inadequate for such a choice.

If, on the other hand, you have defined your business processes, from their start-point to their end-point, and you know what the activities within the process contribute in terms of satisfying the stakeholder expectations, then you can apply your pincers in the sure knowledge of the effects you will be having.

You will still be faced with a bunch of wires when you take the cover from the casing. But now you will know which ones should be treated with great caution, and which ones it is safe to trim with your cost-cutter.