When you say you're focusing on process, what I (almost always) hear is: "We can't debug our communication problem(s)."
Although, in some organizational dialects, the translation is closer to "We need more rules to cover all the exceptions we have to make."
Or, in Middle Managementese, it can mean, "I need to show my boss that I understand what it is you people do around here (and that I'm in control of it)."
At the "straw boss" level, the understanding might be something akin to, "I don't have time to do my job and referee spitting-matches over turf besides."
On the lowest rungs, process can too easily become a security blanket: "Don't make me make decisions that I could be capriciously punished for!"
Now, I don't have a problem with process when it's virtually indistinguishable from communication. And in the term "communication," I also mean the organizational semaphore that means, "Hey, my part of this job is ready for you--go get'em tiger!"
But when process becomes less than an artifact of the most sustainable, stress-free way of getting the product out the door? Problem. Why? Because processes themselves too easily become the bulwark against having to look change straight in the eyeballs. Which makes about as much sense as Prohibition in the middle of The Roaring Twenties, I'll grant you. But an all-too-large percentage of the population have a knack for mistaking laws for mores.
Substitute "process" for laws and "corporate culture" for mores, and you'll have a sense of why tying process to product is such poor management. People come and go, which by necessity puts the culture (and its organic communications flow) in constant flux. Moreover, the ultimate end of process is product, and in my trade, the product is in flux as well. Which is the crux of the problem, particularly when process is merely another outlet for politics.
The moral of the story is to rely on process as sparingly as absolutely possible. And never, ever mistake it for management--much less real leadership.
