The Power and Influence of a GPO - How Deep does Ownership go?

Last month at our Global Process Owner event, there was a lot of discussion surrounding the power and influence that a GPO should hold.

Clearly, the main problem with this question, and indeed with any question regarding the role of a GPO in general, is that there can be no universal rules surrounding its function, the level of governance it is granted or even which processes it has any influence over. This is defined by the nature of the individual business that a GPO is employed within, as well as the flexibility of the business’ main stakeholders and their willingness to hand over full responsibility.

So, during the event, we began the difficult process of addressing power and influence by beginning with the crucial question - whether or not an ‘I can mandate’ culture would even work within our GPOs’ organisations?

Like everything to do with a GPO, the resolution is entirely specific to the existing environment within each individual GPO’s company.  However, we did manage to conclude that by prioritising and well-documenting this ‘I can mandate’ culture, and with a strong governance framework and senior support behind you, there is no reason why a GPO cannot extend deep ownership over their department or organisation.

Now our GPOs were divided, between those who realised they would be able to implement this culture and those within an environment where it would still prove difficult, or not possible at all. Both sides, however, would need an answer as to how they could best extend their ownership over their individual organisations.

Regardless of the divide, our next question, was the same for both groups. ‘What is the system that will best support the improvement needed to be successful in the role of GPO?’

For those unable to impose the ‘I can mandate’ culture, it was determined that process owners would need a well-developed change process and rigorous governance, if they wanted to really drive improvement and extend their influence across the organisation. GPOs in this position must be able to accurately and continuously measure their current state and process, as well as have a back-up process for when things go wrong. Finding a way to communicate process failure to their department was also deemed essential in order to prevent it from happening again in the future.

For those GPOs with the ability to leverage a strong governance framework and garner senior support behind them, the system needed to best support process improvement and extend their power across the organisation was defined as follows:

• Having consequences for non-compliance and senior management to support you
• KPIs around non-compliance
• Best practice sharing
• Helping people to understand why things need to change
• Deep end-to-end process knowledge and influence
• Good relationships throughout the organisation
• A strong mandate

There is no question that those GPOs who are able to insert an ‘I can mandate’ culture into their organisation are able to extend deeper ownership over their processes, because they enjoy senior level support throughout their decision making procedures – a factor which is truly key in helping to push forward organisational and process improvements.  

This is why it was concluded that the essential factors needed for a GPO to be as effective as possible, are based around those GPOs who were able to answer ‘Yes I can’ impose this important ‘I can mandate’ culture within my organisation.

So, here they are – the essential factors our GPOs concluded that they need to maintain power, influence and ownership over their organisation and processes:

• Senior management support
• Consequences for non-compliance
• A communication programme to educate people on making the change
• The creation of a case – centred around what is best for the business
• Documenting as a key, and technology as an enabler
• A large credit card and expense account!
• A compelling business case or crisis