pwabbit,
Many companies are ruled by their department heads and yet processes are meant to be served by several departments. Budgets tend to be assigned to the departments not processes and as a consequence department heads tend to have more power than any process owner.
Changing such departmentally led organizations to give more power to process owners is unlikely unless there is a crisis or a change of leadership. But process ownership can work in such organizations by selecting the person who knows how the process works (the acknowledged process expert) and has the authority to improve it subject to departmental approval.
This is known as a matrix organization where processes have to pull resources from departments. Changing to a process-based organization starts with changing behaviors from departmental thinking (keeping the boss happy) to process thinking (keeping the customer happy).
With strong leadership, customer focus, activity-based costing and a process-based management system the organization can change to diminish the power of department heads in favor of process leaders who still have the expertise but also have the budgets and authorities to achieve breakthroughs in performance.
This is still a matrix organization but the functions serve the processes in creating more successful customers. Unless the organization has a crisis, such transformations take 5 to 10 years.
John
