Improving the wrong process

I suppose that the continuing media attention to the world's financial problems is getting to be a little tiresome. The favourite game of pinning the tail of blame onto a new donkey continues apace so even though very impressed by the man I wasn't expecting much from Andrew Marr's interview with Lord Turner this morning.

But I was agreeably surprised by an observation that could apply generically to a lot of business. Andrew Marr was getting Lord Turner to respond to the accusation that the FSA had failed to keep banking on the rails. I thought LT's response was really interesting:

"With hindsight, the FSA, like other authorities throughout the world, was focused too much on individual institutions and the processes and procedures within them and not adequately focused on the totality of the systemic risks across the whole system and whether there were entire business models, entire ways of operating which were risky."

And he's quite right. We do tend to try to improve inappropriate process. What we should be doing is weighing whether the process itself is actually producing what we want. So oftwn we are admonished to improve our Sales or our Marketing processes. But what if the thing we sell is inapproprately made or delivered or even itself without great benefit?

So before hunting down the next blameworthy target it might be beneficial to look and see if our own neatly ticking processes are appropriate and that we won't ourseles be staring into the uncompromising and criticla gaze of some thoroughly let down dependant.