I had the delightful serendipity, within a single 5 day period, of chairing a webcast with two GBS leaders and attending the Shared Services and Outsourcing Week (SSOW) conference in Lisbon.

In both sessions, we talked about the need for balance between EQ and IQ. One example was the “GXO” vs the “GPO” discussion.

“Experience” vs “Process”.

One thing we know is that effective Global Process Owners MUST focus on the operational outcome and experience of the end-to-end process, both AS-IS and TO-BE.

We talked about 5 big inhibitors to success;

1. The “control vs influence“ challenge in the role – EQ plays a BIG role here
2. Building the cross functional coalition to drive change
3. Driving “AS-IS” performance improvement while designing the “TO-BE” (design vs operate)
4. The natural tension between process-driven and technology-driven change.
5. The impact of human behavior on process change – EQ vs IQ

We summarized the recommendations and experiences of our two special guests which you can read here. . . 

We have developed a “GPO Playbook” and supporting workshops to help drive the necessary changes to accelerate time to value in global end-to-end processes and the GPO capability.

There is also a related article on EQ (emotional intelligence) which is worth thinking about as you develop and hire your teams to take you to the next level.

Thanks for reading.