The Operational Excellence (OPEX) Reference Group – North America & EU Chapter, powered by PRIME BPM, hosted its final Live Meetup of the year. It brought together operational excellence, continuous improvement, and transformation professionals from across both regions.
The virtual session featured Katrin Schilling, an organisational development consultant at Kanton Basel Stadt who leads Human-Centric Digital Transformation in Life Sciences. Her session was titled “Beyond the Typical Process Map: Merging Operational Excellence with Psychology to Drive Change.” Katrin draws on more than 12 years at Takeda and Novartis and combines Industrial and Organisational Psychology with Lean and Agile Business Excellence.
Key Discussion Highlights Included:
- Why steps like “verify” and “approve” look like instructions but are really decision points, using an invoice process as a worked example.
- What the classic photocopier “because” study reveals about how standard work is written, and why high-stakes steps should be made visibly different from routine ones.
- Why psychological safety determines whether people question a rule that doesn’t fit, and why the best-led teams often report the most errors, not the fewest.
- Why hypercare typically ends long before new ways of working become habit, with research showing habit formation can take anywhere from 18 to 254 days.
- The warning signs of change that hasn’t landed: workarounds and shadow procedures, gradual drift, “watermelon” KPIs where silence looks like success, and ownership that disappears when the project closes.
The session was highly interactive. Participants joined live polls on where their last major change now “lives” in the organisation and whether anyone measures it 180 days after go-live. They also shared first-hand stories of following procedures that no longer fit the situation, approving AI-drafted content, and spotting rules everyone follows but few understand. Common themes included change fatigue, with the next project often starting before the last has settled, and success measures that stop at system log-ins rather than real engagement and benefit.
About the Operational Excellence Reference Group
Powered by PRIME BPM, the OPEX Reference Group is a cross-industry community connecting transformation professionals to collaborate, share insights, and accelerate operational success. Designed for those involved in process improvement, digital transformation, compliance, risk management, and continuous improvement, the group offers a platform to stay ahead of trends, gain practical knowledge, and engage with industry leaders through exclusive meetups and sessions.