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Steven Wright once asked if shaving cream does anything at all beyond helping you keep track.

It’s a good question.

It isn’t just shaving cream whose only role is helping you keep track. Sometimes, that’s the role of the “repeatable, predictable processes” that so many of us high falutin’ consultants promote as the solution to every business problem.

Before we had process redesign we had Taylor’s “scientific management” and its time-and-motion studies, which tried to turn industrial processes into precisely defined repetitive motions. Beginning with the assumption that business works best when human brains aren’t involved in running it, scientific management led inevitably to repetitive stress disorder. Oops.

We’ve replaced scientific management with process redesign. According to the process perspective, “everything is a process,” a phrase I’ve heard often enough to make me want to argue, just out of spite. “My desk isn’t a process,” I hear myself retort cleverly while I watch ’em fold like pawn-shop accordions. “Neither is my car. Or my …”

“No, no!” they sputter, nonplussed. “We meant to say, everything you do is a process, because everything you do is a series of steps that gets you to the end result.”

Which is absolutely, true — everything you do is a process. Everything you do isn’t, however, a Process, a distinction process design consultants often fail to make in their zeal to craft high-quality-producing methods for achieving results. There are three big differences between processes and Processes:

1. Most of the intelligence needed to create the desired results has been built into Processes. In contrast, most of the intelligence needed to successfully follow a process is in the minds of the individuals following it.

2. The products of Processes have well-defined specifications; quality is defined as adherence to those specifications and can be objectively measured. A Process generates either large numbers or a continuous flow of its product. A process also creates an output. That output may be unique or a custom item; often its specifications aren’t known in advance.

3. People fulfill roles in Processes — the Process is at the center. It’s the other way around with processes: People use them to make sure they do things in the right order without forgetting anything. Lower-case processes play a role in employees’ success.

Don’t buy it yet? Think of the difference between the Process of manufacturing a car and the process of creating advertising. You can specify the steps for building a car so precisely that industrial robots can handle it — all of the intelligence is in the Process. Every last detail of the product has exact specifications and tolerances. If you follow the Process exactly, you must end up with a high-quality car.

You can also specify the steps needed to create advertising — you may analyze the marketplace, determine the product’s tangible and emotional benefits for each market segment, and so on. When you’re done, you’ll never end up with a process that can be handled by industrial robots (although many advertisements certainly look as if they were authored by automata). There’s no tight specification for distinguishing good ads from bad ones until you test-market to find out which ones make the cash register ring.

In our quest to make systems development and integration repeatable, predictable, and most important an activity we can reliably budget, we keep trying to turn it into a Process.

Systems development should follow a well-defined process, if for no other reason than to make sure we don’t leave anything out.

But a Process? Nope.

A great system is a work of art, both internally and in use. The processes used to create it help programmers focus on getting the job done instead of figuring out what the job is. Following the methodology facilitates great results. Only talented designers and programmers can cause them.

Here’s the wonderful irony of it all: Process redesign consultants don’t follow a Process. Only a process.

I recently had the pleasure of reading Richard Dawkins’ River Out of Eden. I haven’t spent time with Dawkins since reading his influential The Selfish Gene two decades ago. In both books, Dawkins explores the ramifications of a DNA-centric view of natural selection. Begin with the premise that bodies are just DNA’s way of making more DNA, and the consequences are plentiful, fascinating — and very helpful in understanding how businesses operate, a subject we’ll explore in future columns.

Dawkins is, among other things, a modern Sir Thomas Huxley, who joyfully and convincingly demolishes the arguments of those who reject evolutionary theory. In Eden he takes particular pleasure in demolishing the intellectual sin of what he calls “Argument from Personal Incredulity” (API).

API begins with an accurate statement: “I don’t see how that could be possible.” The implication — that because you don’t see how it can work, it can’t work — replaces logic with a sizable dose of arrogance.

Arrogance? ‘Fraid so. If it’s evolution, API means your inability to figure it out outweighs lifetimes of hard work and deep thought by thousands of geniuses who have researched, modified, refined and extended Darwin’s work over more than a century. Ah, what did they know, anyway?

Natural selection is one thing. If you don’t feel like accepting this thoroughly researched scientific theory, that’s your privilege. The problem is, plenty of managers apply API to their day-to-day decision-making. How about you?

Business is as filled with interesting ideas as a Greek restaurant is with savory vittles. Should you augment financial statements with a balanced scorecard? Perhaps you should start calculating “Economic Value Added” (EVA). On a technical note, there’s the potential for use-case analysis to replace traditional methodologies.

You walk a fine line when you evaluate new ideas. Accept them all and you’re following the fad of the month. Reject them all and you invite stagnation.

It’s tempting to apply API, embracing what fits your biases while rejecting the rest as unworkable. Ever say, “It doesn’t work that way in this company,”? It’s API — you’ve decided it can’t work because you don’t personally understand how it can. Then there’s the popular, “It’s a great theory, but …” Ever wonder what would have happened if Franklin Delano Roosevelt had said that to Albert Einstein?

Okay, both API and automatic acceptance of the experts are wrong. What’s right?

The first step in resolving this dilemma is simply to match new ideas to your top priorities. At any given moment, a good leader will be sponsoring between one and three high-level goals — significant changes that will make a real difference to the company. Screen out as interesting but unimportant, or maybe file away for future use, all except those ideas that can help you achieve your current goals.

Next, assess how widely each idea has been tested.

This assessment shouldn’t drive your choice, just your method of evaluation. A new and untested idea, for example, may be just what you need. Analyze it closely, though. Great ideas live or die in the details, and in the absence of wide real-world use you’ll have to figure them out yourself.

Many of the most highly hyped ideas have been applied in only one, or maybe just a few, companies. In these cases it’s the glowing descriptions of success that call for scrutiny. Sometimes what looks like success on the surface is really a glowing story of how great everything is going to be someday. Or the success is real enough, but the great idea isn’t what caused it. Or you may be reading a history written by the survivors. Regardless, make sure you understand the circumstances of each success before you decide to replicate them yourself.

Then there are ideas that have been widely deployed and are generally accepted. Should you just accept them too and put them into practice?

Since this column challenges popular, widely accepted ideas on a regular basis, that clearly isn’t the right answer. But what is?

Tune in next week to find out.