Backlash Against Process Standardization?

Joseph Hall and Eric Johnson have an article entitled "When Should a Process be Art, Not Science?" in the March 2009 Harvard Business Review. In it they discuss the fact that some contexts are too variable to allow standardized processes to be effective.

Although there are echoes of Tushman's Exploitation-Exploration contrast and Cynefin's Complicated-Complex contrast here, Hall and Johnson emphasize the need for "artistic processes" when the following condition exists:

• A variable environment (inputs, process, and/or desired outputs) - at some point, the costs of standardized processes outweigh the benefits. Costs may be real (i.e., a very complex "scientific" process that's expensive to design and maintain) and/or opportunity (i.e., the "scientific" process is either too slow and inflexible to address key customer needs).
  And, the authors rightly emphasize the fact that most real world contexts have artistic aspects and scientific aspects. Where analysis and best practices are effective they should be used (science); where they are not, a probing approach that uses qualitative metrics should be used (art).

Since the article's purpose is not to examine the sources of a focus on standardization, the authors don't have much to say about why the need to balance science and art is becoming more pressing. Here's a few snap reactions I had...I suspect you can think of a few more if you're interested in systems and their structure. These are reasons why there tends to be a bias toward "scientific processes."

• We like predictability...the more the better (up to a point, see "Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience" for more detail). In my more cynical moments, I wonder if American management writing might be best summarized as a continual search for the Holy Grail of "The Magical Incantation" that allows any unthinking human to mindlessly create unending value. I'm sure the authors generally don't feel that way (after all, they are innovative thinkers almost by definition), but the mass readership's appetite for the latest concept make me wonder.
• As the lower layers of various capabilities become standardized (everything from double entry accounting to gun parts to automobile designs to the IP stack), dramatically more complex capabilities are enabled...which (at least initially) have a large amount of variability as users probe the new solution space that such standardization opens up. Eventually, aspects of that solution space become standardized (sometimes de facto, sometimes de jure), and the cycle starts over. For example, in the IT arena, the emerging emphasis in services is due in large part to the increasing standardization of technologies that used to be largely artistic (trends like Moore's Law are significant drivers in enabling this standardization). And, as the standardization-complex-standardization cycle time compresses, the importance of balancing the two increases.
• Since processes attempt to interact with the world in a predictable way to achieve a desired goal, they instantiate/reflect a model of that world. Although traditional modeling may contain non-deterministic elements (e.g., events may have an associated probability distribution, etc.), the modeling mindset is primarily quantitative, deterministic, and "scientific." So, processes tend to be scientific.
• The Scientific Revolution, the subsequent Technological Revolution, and the Quality Revolution have combined, for the first time in world history, to create amazing amounts of excess wealth. Routinization of a process enables first the use of lower skill labor, then automation, of that process, resulting in lower costs for a specific capability. Ford's River Rouge complex is what I always think of. The coming worldwide demographic bust will create even more pressure for moving artistic work into scientific space.\

If you're in an environment that seems relentlessly focused on standardizing processes, this article is a nice summary of why some balance may be due.