Myers-Briggs and BPM

Myers-Briggs personality tests – how does this apply to business processes?

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) assessment is a questionnaire designed to measure psychological preferences in how people perceive the world and make decisions. There are 16 possible combinations of characteristics that are an indicator of what of personality you possess. The goal of knowing about personality type is to understand and appreciate differences between people and all types are equal.

For example, I am an INTJ.  What this means is:

• I – Introversion preferred to extraversion: INTJs tend to be quiet and reserved.
• N – Intuition preferred to sensing: INTJs tend to be more abstract than concrete.
• T – Thinking preferred to feeling: INTJs tend to value objective criteria above personal preference.
• J – Judgment preferred to perception: INTJs tend to plan their activities and make decisions early.

The main characteristics of the Myers-Briggs indicator include:

• How a person focuses their attention or get their energy (extraversion or introversion)
• How a person perceives or takes in information (sensing or intuition)
• How a person prefers to make decisions (thinking or feeling)
• How a person orients themselves to the external world (judgment or perception)

So, can the Myers-Briggs test be adapted by a business process? After all, a business process could have predictable or unpredictable outcomes.  It could be outward facing to customers or inward facing to the organization. It could be very rigid or allow for multiple variations.

Take my favorite process, expense automation.  In this process I input my expenses into a system and after resolving the typical requests for missing or inaccurate data, I receive a deposit advice in my checking account. How could you apply Myers-Briggs to this process? Well it is an inward facing process, it is sensing because of the use of a common form, thinking because the next step is anticipated and the types of exceptions are included and well documented in the process, and it is judgmental, I either enter the data correctly or not. So, in this case, is the process an ISTJ?

It would be interesting to apply this to multiple processes and determine the process Myers-Briggs indicator, but I will leave that to the extroverts.

If you have any comments on this blog, I would love to hear them.