Process redesign versus process improvement: knowing which one you need

Process improvement and process redesign are often used interchangeably. They should not be. Choosing the wrong approach for your situation is one of the most common and most expensive mistakes organisations make when they decide to fix something that is not working.

The difference in plain terms ¶

Process improvement assumes the process is fundamentally sound and needs to be made more efficient. You are optimising something that is working. Process redesign assumes the process is no longer fit for purpose and needs to be rebuilt from its original logic. You are replacing something that has stopped working.

The distinction matters because the two approaches require different levels of disruption, different timelines, and different kinds of stakeholder involvement. Applying improvement methods to a process that needs redesign produces marginal gains at best. It is the organisational equivalent of repainting a house with a structural problem.

How to tell which one you need ¶

The clearest signal that you need redesign rather than improvement is that the workarounds have become the process. When the informal way of doing things has diverged significantly from the documented way, and when that divergence is widespread and stable, the documented process has already been redesigned by the people doing the work. The question is whether to formalise that redesign or to start from the original intent.

Another signal is that the process was designed for a context that no longer exists. A procurement process designed for a ten-person team will not improve its way into fitness for a hundred-person organisation. The underlying logic needs to change, not the execution.

What this means for how you engage help ¶

If you bring in a consultant to improve a process that actually needs redesigning, you will get a more efficient version of the wrong thing. This is worth being explicit about before any engagement begins. At Logi Mastery, the first step in any process engagement is a diagnostic conversation specifically designed to answer this question before any work begins.

The honest version of this is that most organisations know which one they need. They choose improvement because it is less disruptive. Sometimes that is the right call. Often it is not.