 Last
week I met with Graham Westwood, CEO of ProCarta Inc. While many others
are giving up on the promise of 'explicit', 'codified', knowledge to
solve important business problems, ProCarta has found a compelling
niche for the rigorous codification of explicit knowledge: Areas of high risk.
Graham uses the analogy of a 'recipe' to resurrect the reputation of
'best practices'. Rather than a rigid, invariable series of steps that
must be followed precisely to the letter, the procedures, suggestions,
caveats and best practices incorporated into the ProCarta applications
provide a flexible recipe for effectively and efficiently navigating
areas of high business risk. Even a master chef will follow a recipe
the first time he or she tries something new. The flexible nature of
the software allows the ideas, suggestions, newly-discovered best
practices and warnings to be written, wiki-style, into the recipe,
providing additional guidance for other users.
The company's approach to IT is also quite radical: Rather than sending
IT consultants out to integrate its risk management solutions into the
company's existing IT infrastructure, ProCarta develops its
applications outside the IT infrastructure, as simple, portable,
stand-alone solutions. The business processes involved in addressing
the high-risk problem is analyzed by the user into Processes,
Activities, and Tasks, with each Task assigned to a specific identified
Role. The regulatory requirements, best practices, and expert guidance
and caveats are then keyed in to each Task. And then with the push of a
button, the easy-to-use, non-technical ProCarta software produces a set
of web pages with the corporation's look-and-feel. The resultant
website takes users through each step in the risky process, isolates
the Tasks in each Role, and even turns out job descriptions.
One area where ProCarta's solution has received considerable traction
has been Sarbanes-Oxley Act compliance. 'SOX" compliance procedures
were developed to prevent a recurrence of the Enron/Arthur Andersen
disaster. They address the corporate security environment, division of
responsibilities, new oversight and review responsibilities, and the
auditor attestation process.
To those who shrug off the value of prescribed procedures and best
practices as an unwelcome imposition on the freedom and personal
judgement of professional managers, Graham points out that, where at
one time 'corporate cowboys' were highly respected as individualists,
in high-risk areas they can get the entire business into serious
trouble, leading to jail time or bankruptcy.
As Drucker has often pointed out, in today's business world we are all
subject matter experts, and almost everyone's job is unique. We are
always to some extent the best at what we, uniquely, do. And for that
reason best practices that attempt to capture what someone else does well, have not proven terribly fertile ground for knowledge transfer. "That might be a best practice for his
job, but that's not what I do -- my job is different". But in some
high-risk areas, everyone doing something different is not a recipe for
flexibility and entrepreneurship, but a recipe for disaster.
|
MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
