PCPs Don't Require Forms

The paradigm shift comes in detaching oneself from the fixation with forms. I am fuming! When you move a paper based form into an electronic form with all the fields intact, you're really shining turd - Too blunt. Too direct (I know).

The audience looks on like I'm a wild man from the mountains.

"He's talking nonsense...", the crowd slowly rumbles, and the built up tension turned into yells of

"Blasphemy! Blasphemy!"

But surely the world has changed, and an organization that is built for change, needs to move with the change.

I thus challenge the reader to see what I see.

• How long have you worked with the organization? 5, 10, 20, 30 years?
• How many times were you compelled to write your name on a form? Don't your friends and colleague for that many years know you by now?
• How many times were you coerced into scrummaging for an archaic label that says - please enter your charge code? (Image below is an actual form from a global USD16bil a year outsourcing firm)

• How many of you actually know your charge code?
• Do you actually know how many forms and which forms do you require?
• Do you know where to get the form?
• Do you know whom to ask for the form?
• How many times were you told that you've filled up the wrong form?
• How long did you take to fill up the form?
• How long did it take to actually get what you wanted?

The following technologies are available and able to permanently replace all manner of forms, electronic or otherwise:

1. Directory Services
   To identify who you are, where you are in the hierarchy and the policies that governs you.
2. Identity and Access Management
   To enable and disable access to systems that you need access to or rights which can be accorded to you.
3. Work flow/Rules Engine
   To route the requests to the relevant party and prioritize the requests.
4. Messaging System(email) + Unified Communications (a bonus)
   To notify the approver, wherever the person is!
5. A simple dashboard
   to flag and identify approving authorities that take forever to authorize a request. Also to tell where you are in the approving chain.

You can save your organization millions if not hundreds of millions of lost productivity hours by simply embracing this paradigm shift. And I dare say that the technologies above take pittance to implement compared to the benefits of an almost Godlike 'organizational hygiene' .

That's the thing with Principle Centered Processes - it seeks Godlike perfection.
More importantly, it brings humanity into technology