The 5 Most Important Skills For Process Owners

Sharedserviceslink and Tungsten Network recently partnered to run a survey what makes for a successful process owner. While the role of Process Owner has been growing over the last 5 years, we found there often isn’t much guidance as to what the role of a process owner should entail, and the critical success factors to drive real improvements to KPIs.

One of the aspects we examined was the ideal skill set for a Process Owner.

The top 5 skills that came out from the survey were enlightening.

1. Change Management (71%). Process Owners are really change makers, and they rely on teams of people around the world to help them drive change. Changing processes that may have been in place for years, or even decades is no easy task. And changes that may result in reductions in headcount are difficult to navigate. Process Owners must have skills that enable them to understand what changes have to be made and how they can drive them at every level, from operations up to senior management.
2. Communication (68%) Driving changes to process and enforcing compliance and consistency is only possible through relentless and effective communication. Process owners must be able to communicate and drive their business case to senior management, sell their changes to key stakeholders, and communicate the importance at the operational level as well.
3. Influence and authority within the business (67%). While perhaps not strictly a skill… Positioning yourself to influence and have real authority is essential for a process owner to be successful. Designing and mapping excellent processes is great, but if you don’t have the ability to influence and drive change, you can only go so far. The fact that influence and authority is such an important skill also correlates with the fact that 69% of our respondents were recruited from within the business for their role.
4. In-depth Process Knowledge (57%) We may have expected this skill to come in number one, however Process Owners rated in-depth process knowledge as less important than the ability to drive change. Yet a Process Owner’s authority and ability to communicate is linked to how well they understand the process. Change management and communication skills may take you far, but they won’t make you the ‘go-to’ person if you don’t have the process know-how to back up your mission.
5. Business Acumen (36%) Key to being able to convince people of why changes to process are necessary is understanding why and how it will impact the business.  Process owners can’t operate in isolation. They need to understand how the business works, so that when they are designing processes they understand how any changes will impact different parts of the business.