May 2026:

“The only constant in life is change” (Heraclitus). This has never been truer than it is today. The critical skill that organizations must develop is continuous adaptation to new strategic contexts (Pregmark and Beer 2025). Unfortunately, how we currently organize, manage, and lead our organizations requires navigating entrenched organizational structures, political dynamics, unclear mandates, and other challenges (Amaral et al. 2025). Reenter process orientation (PO). PO is a topic that deserves reconsideration, as it offers an alternative to ineffective traditional methods.

Revisiting Process Orientation: Success is not achieved through quick fixes but through systematically changing the way organizations are structured, managed, and led (Pregmark and Beer 2025).

So why revisit process orientation? Because the traditional, centuries-old “best practices” we are still relying on to organize, manage, and lead are rife with issues. These outdated methods, especially specialization (i.e., functions or departments) and hierarchy (i.e., multileveled command and control), create multiple challenges that are structurally embedded and politically charged and cannot be resolved; they must be replaced by completely different approaches (Amaral et al. 2025). According to research by Pregmark and Beer (2025) and Senge (2006), traditional approaches to organization and management lead to:

• Fiefdoms of power that are hostile toward meaningful dialogue, cutting off contact and preventing resolution of important problems.

• Conflicts in strategy, purpose, values, and/or priorities that go unresolved due to an equally strong conflict avoidance behavior.

• Poor communication, coordination, and collaboration of resources across the organization that leads to competition and conflicts.

• Inadequate delegation of authority and decision rights to the actionable level due to bureaucracy, which demotivates lower levels and destroys trust.

• Confusion when siloed leaders fail to speak with one voice, leading to misaligned understandings of strategy, priority, or methods.

• Organizational silence (the withholding of information about problems or issues) motivated by the desire to preserve appearances or save face.

The net effect of these issues leads to a sobering conclusion: Most of our strategic change and improvement initiatives fail, not due to the design or execution of the initiatives but due to their inability to overcome the inertia of the existing methods of organizing, managing, and leading (Amaral et al. 2025). This is supported by the fact that “90% of all strategies are never implemented, and 70% of all change initiatives fail” (Pregmark and Beer 2025). The hard truth is that our current systems of organization and management are holding us back. “We have met the enemy, and he is us” (Walt Kelly 1972).

PO offers an alternative approach that can address these challenges. Far beyond advocating for just changes to organizational structures—as some interpret it—PO represents a multifaceted construct requiring a thorough adoption of multiple elements. These elements, utilized simultaneously, ensure alignment across process-based: job descriptions, incentive systems, workflow designs, training, documentation, ownership rights, performance measurement, knowledge management, culture, and IT systems (Kohlbacher 2010, Szelągowski and Berniak-Woźny 2024).

PO overcomes the challenges of traditional methods by drawing organization-wide attention and energies toward end-to-end value creation (supplier to customer). It eliminates the negative stimuli and dysfunction associated with specialization and hierarchy, allowing for concentration on outcomes and customer satisfaction (Kohlbacher 2010).

A successful implementation of PO leads to improvements in employee satisfaction, learning, efficiency, productivity, quality, profitability, and overall performance (Kohlbacher 2010). Employees who have transitioned from traditional to process-orientated environments report a greater degree of engagement with their work and the organization, heightened awareness of overall organizational purpose and methods of delivering value, closer and less confrontative relationships with colleagues, and many other benefits (Barbeau 2022).

Adopting a PO approach to organization and management is synonymous with adopting both systems thinking and first-principles strategies; it is essential to understand and align the entire organization (the system) around value creation (the most basic element). When groups of people are aligned and operate as a whole, energies are conserved and harmonized, a commonality of purpose emerges, and they develop a better understand of how to complement one another’s efforts (Senge 2006).

Recommendations:

The goal is to create an entirely new means of organizing and managing (i.e., a new system) that replaces the complexity and contention of specialization and hierarchy with simplicity and customer-centricity. Visualizing and changing the entire system of organizing, managing, and leading is needed to encourage new behaviors (Pregmark and Beer 2025). Done well, PO should fully resolve the People Problem (see newsletter #3) and a large part of the Process Problem (see newsletter #6).

The new system must focus on value creation and produce outcomes for customers that will keep them coming back. A transition to process orientation must engage and involve the entire organization; it is not a departmental solution. However, there are ways to start incrementally. Providing a complete guide to transformation is beyond the scope of this article; however, the following will get you started:

• Define purpose and vision. Co-create your purpose (why) and vision (what) for the organization with all employees; shared vision and purpose motivate shared commitment. The result should paint a picture of the future that employees carry with them, fostering risk-taking, experimentation, and long-term commitment. A strong, clearly defined shared purpose promotes unity, clarity, engagement, performance, and uplifted aspirations (Pregmark and Beer 2025, Senge 2006).

• Map end-to-end processes. Identify overall, end-to-end value creation processes that support the purpose, vision, and desired customer outcomes. This should span the entire organization, including all teams, and disregard functional or departmental boundaries. Aligning around the entire value creation flow improves coordination (Senge 2006). A physical product example would flow from suppliers to raw materials, to production process, to finished goods, to highly satisfied customers.

• Engage the Organization. Continue the co-creation by inviting all employees to bring their knowledge, experience, and commitment into an open discussion of strategy (how) to optimize the newly mapped end-to-end processes. Open cultures that leverage employee creativity and innovation (Szelągowski and Berniak-Woźny 2024) and encourage honest conversations promote trust, satisfaction, and commitment (Pregmark and Beer 2025).

• Experiment and adjust. The best way to learn is through experimentation (Senge 2006). With the co-created and shared purpose, vision, strategy, and processes in place, select a segment of the core end-to-end process to experiment on. Empower a team of motivated employees (who) with all required skills and provide adequate resources (time, space, funding, autonomy, safety). Allow them to self-organize and select execution steps and technologies to reinvent the process segment while achieving the same or better outcomes. Adjust as needed during the experiment to ensure the success of the outcome; don’t give up if you don’t get it right the first time.

• Observe closely and learn. Collect detailed feedback during and after the experiment to gauge reactions, needed changes, and successes. Assess the reactions of the team members involved. Were they able to achieve the same or better outcomes? Did they complete the work better-cheaper-faster than with the previous cross-functional process? Which mode of operating did they prefer? Assess the reactions of management. Did they sense a loss of control by surrendering oversight? Did they see a noticeable improvement in team member behaviors? Did customers report better experiences or improved outcomes in product, service, or other metrics?

• Replicate success. Use the early successes of experiments to replicate the approach on additional segments of the core process. Repeat this approach until the entire chain of core process areas are operating around the customer-centric construct of value creation, as opposed to functional departments. Process orientation will be achieved once all employees are structured and operating along the supplier-to-customer value chain.

PO offers several advantages over traditional approaches to how we organize, manage, and lead. Most notable is the elimination of the bureaucratic overhead of specialization and hierarchy that restricts an organization’s ability to adapt to change. Therefore, your most important strategic change initiative should be to become proficient at strategic change. PO supports this capability.

Stay tuned for MORe insights and recommendations.