Demystifying Knowledge - Business Process Reengineering - Cup of Tea Anyone?

I've worked on a few business process re-engineering (BPR) projects and they have the ability to be spectacularly brilliant and completely turn the business around. In my very humble opinion, they're well worth the money that is spent on them, but the question that has been bugging me is, why are they needed at all. The most common answer I've received when I posed this question was:'people don't know how to operate in a continuous improvement environment' and this bugged me even more. This is why.

People use continuous improvement principles all the time in their day-to-day lives. Take the very basic process of making a cup of tea. Think about the steps you follow. What do you do? Do you put the kettle on and then wait for it to boil before you put the tea bag in the cup? Or do you put the tea bag in the cup with the sugar while you wait for the water to boil? It does not matter what route you follow but there is a very high probability that the process that you follow has been tweaked by you to be quicker and more efficient. Congratulations, you have just re-engineered your process for making tea and until you have got it down to an art form you will continue to improve it.

Part of the reason that BPR projects work so spectacularly is because they're based on leaps of improvement. A consulting firm comes in and changes the process from what it is (as-is) to the future state (to-be) in a short period of time and yield spectacular results. The reason for this is that they're addressing large periods where the business was stagnant and did not improve their processes at all so it stands to reason that the improvements will be marked. None of this would be needed however if staff internal to the company were constantly looking to improve how they do things. If they constantly looked to improve processes then there would be incremental improvements in the business. Adding the increments up would give yo similar if not the same results to those realised by the consultants.

My BPR skills come from a place that I'm not very proud of but hey they works. By nature I'm very lazy and I'm constantly thinking...surely there is an easier way to do this. This is another reason why I can't understand why more employees are not employing BPR principles, why are they not looking for 'short cuts' or an easier way to do things? Is it because there managers are not willing to listen or is it because they're not using a skill that they so readily use in other aspects of their lives?

So part of what I'm saying, is comon folks be lazier and look for those short cuts (don't break the law though) and who knows you may save your company a few bob and put me out of work (god forbid).