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The Professional

12 May, 2010 by James Lawther Leave a Comment

Sometimes I come across people who are really hard to convince of the need to look at an organisation as a set of processes, as one big system.  They don’t see the relevance to their daily work.

Often these people are “professionals”.  They have been trained for years in the optimisation of one aspect of a service and have risen to the top of the organisational tree because they are very good at it.  They believe that what they do is so complicated and so creative that it can’t be systematised or improved upon.

They include, amongst others: lawyers, underwriters, doctors, accountants, statisticians and journalists.

Their view of the world is as experts, error prevention is down to them and them alone.  Nobody can be trusted to do what they have spent years training to do.  They know it all.

How do you persuade these people that they need to work within the system, not stand aloof from it?

Filed Under: Blog, Process Improvement Tagged With: error proofing, silo management

About the Author

James Lawther
James Lawther

James Lawther is a middle-aged, middle manager.

To reach this highly elevated position he has worked in numerous industries, from supermarket retailing to tax collecting.  He has had several operational roles, including running the night shift in a frozen pea packing factory and carrying out operational research for a credit card company.

As you can see from his C.V. he has either a wealth of experience or is incapable of holding down a job.  If the latter is true this post isn’t worth a minute of your attention.

Unfortunately, the only way to find out is to read it and decide for yourself.

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