Learning about e2e process accountability from the aviation industry

The MH370 crash is thankfully an outlier when it comes to operational process breakdown. To understand how aviation has achieved process excellence, we need to back up a bit. It's helpful to first understand the various stages involved in improving business processes.

In general, business processes in supply chain and elsewhere achieve excellence via five discrete layers of action:

Fix non-standard processes: This is the starting point. Imagine what might happen if there were different steps for each country, or each airline, when it came to handling ATC control transfers. That's the first step in improving processes.

Synchronise siloed processes: Imagine if ATCs were standard but siloed off from other aviation processes, such as airport gate management. Handoff errors would result. This step addresses that.

Execute E2E processes consistently: Assume that terminal check-in to gate management to ATC processes have been synchronised but executional discipline is spotty. That can occur because it takes time to stabilise processes. Handoff errors may still occur.

Add robust fail-safe designs to E2E process execution: Assume that processes from terminal check-in all the way to ATC are well executed. However, if no fail-safe procedures have been designed for the rare situations where problems occur, there will be occasional blowups. That's because while processes are efficient E2E, there is no Unified Accountability for an employee to circumvent or fix perfect-storm-type issues.

Design roles for Unified Accountability of outcomes: At this stage employees are empowered both to achieve near-zero defects and to constantly evolve processes to keep up process excellence.

Applying these layers to our work on business process maturity, we can see that all five items could cause handoff errors in real life day-to-day execution. The usual E2E process designs address handoff issues for the first three - i.e., Standardisation, E2E process management, and disciplined execution. It is the final two—further reducing handoffs and designing roles for Unified Accountability of outcomes—that are less developed.

Here are tips I would offer to further manage handoff errors to ensure E2E unified accountability:

Tips to deliver e2e unified accountability in a work process

• Create global process owner (GPO) for each E2E process. And more importantly design their roles to include E2E accountability for day-today operational outcomes. Most often, GPO's accountability includes only process design and quarterly or annual business outcomes.
• Streamline the organisational design between the GPOs and functional operations. In today's world, when a process extends through multiple areas or functions, different people are responsible for each single part. Significant handoff issues and losses occur.
• Work backwards from key customer outcomes to design E2E key performance metrics. This helps in going beyond siloed process efficiency and drives E2E outcomes deep within the organisation.
• Eliminate conflicting reward systems that are based purely on siloed or functional cost reductions and reliability, as opposed to E2E company or E2E customer. The reason for organisational silos is usually driven by functional reward systems.
• Re-engineer IT systems for E2E standardisation and automation. They must eliminate system touches between siloed processes or functions.