Thus, although process was extremely important to Rummler, it was always just one part of a comprehensive approach to performance improvement, and it was important only because it supported the goals of the organization. He assumed that at each level organizations would define goals and measures, create designs for achieving their goals and measures, and establish management practices that would assure that the designs achieved the desired goals and measures. He imagined an organization comprised of three levels: one concerned with the organization as a whole, one concerned with the specific processes the organization used to accomplish work, and one focused on the concrete activities that people and systems performed. More than anything else, the matrix suggests the scope of Geary Rummler’s vision. When I think of Rummler’s impact, I usually think first of his performance matrix, which is pictured in Table F.1. Instead, he focused on corporate performance and on how companies could be organized and managed to produce superior performance. In reality, Geary Rummler never focused on processes as such.
