Business processes are omnipresent and critical for success. With or without environment changes, these processes need to improve, to remain healthy. Process improvement has, hitherto, suffered from a limited treatment – cure. An end-to-end medical view can help deliver comprehensive healthiness of business processes. It is also worthwhile contrasting the approaches of medical systems other than the Allopathic. This article explores how the lessons of medical practice can help improve business processes, more completely, and more sustainably.

Business processes, like many others systems, are a product of evolution. In most cases, they were not engineered to perfection, they were ‘naturally selected’ for expediency. It is no surprise, hence, that they age, become unsuitable to the environment, and suffer from health issues. Tied as they are to human organizations, they need an organic approach to remain healthy. This may be the reason that attempts to re-engineer them have had limited success. It may hence be advisable to look at a comprehensive medical view to ensure their health.

When we consider the medical view, we may tend to limit ourselves to diagnosis and cure. This is a limited view, practiced widely, and probably one of the reasons for our narrow approach to process improvement. Medicine has seven distinct phases or aims. They are Promotion, Prevention, Diagnosis, Cure, Rehabilitation, Palliation, and End-of-Life Care. Promotion involves evangelizing healthy practices. Prevention is a proactive approach aimed at averting or avoiding disease. Diagnosis determines the nature or cause of the disease. Cure restores health. Rehabilitation is restoration of self sufficiency or function to operate in as normal a way as possible. Palliation cloaks a disease, curing it partially, to the extent feasible. End-of-Life Care helps in the movement towards the inevitable death. As we can see, there is much more to health than diagnosis and cure. The same applies to business processes.

Completeness of coverage is not enough. There is also a need for examining the approach. Allopathy, the system of medicine most of us are used to, has its limitations. It may provide immediate and direct relief, but tends to suffer from being reductionist, focused more on symptoms, and possibly leading to side effects. Hence, it is advisable to examine the benefits of considering the Homeopathic and Ayurvedic approaches to improving health of business processes.