Complexity is the defining character of our age. We see it encroaching on us from every direction. Complexity seems to have infected even those things that were at one time very simple. Remember S&H Green Stamps, one of the first customer loyalty programs? My parents and grandparents collected them whenever they made a purchase at a participating vendor. They licked and placed them in books until they had enough to redeem for an item in the S&H Catalog. They sent the required number of books and pages of green stamps off to wherever and a short time later we received the item in the mail. A model of simplicity compared to what we have now.

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Yes, I’ve had my shorts in a knot for quite some time now when I think of executive leadership in most companies, which have positions that don’t make sense, and those very companies may be missing the most important leadership post of all. First of all, technology is just a tool we use to get work done.

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A theme of recent global conferences has been the mix of different approaches to improving business performance. This quest for business performance improvement as measured by reducing costs, improving revenues and enhanced service (also known as ‘the triple crown’) is a worldwide phenomena brought on by increasing competition, greater customer promiscuity, chaotic business cycles and more generally ‘globalization’. The pressure continues to increase and companies are seeking to extract every last opportunity out of their various initiatives and approaches. So what works best then?

The last three decades have seen a gradual refinement of management thinking and practice to now present a strategic choice for organizations. The route people take should be determined by the place companies find themselves in, the place they would like to get to and the speed with which they need to move. Unfortunately all too often companies are choosing inappropriate methods and tools, investing large amounts of money in dubious technologies and training their people in techniques already proven suspect in the last century. Why is this so?

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When I am researching people and articles I need quick access to a collection of reference points. Here’s my shortened list. If you know of any good uns let me know and we will publish them also. Regards, Steve

Greetings from Evian, France! I am with my colleague Steve Towers here for the FST Summit and we can tell you that Evian is a truly beautiful location that is refreshing for both the mind and the soul.

Yet what I want to talk about has nothing to do with the peaceful French countryside. The subject at hand comes from observations from the previous two conferences in Belgium and Barcelona, and that subject is the time (effort, expense, commitment) required to make BPM create real organizational value.

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