Good Process Design Is Not Enough: Process, Regulation and Ownership with Paavo Heikkinen

Description:In this episode, Liam O’Neill speaks with Paavo Heikkinen, Head of BPM and Change Management at Bank Frick, the Liechtenstein-based financial institution operating at the intersection of banking, fintech and crypto services.Paavo’s career has taken him from consulting into manufacturing and now into financial services, working across organisations including BMW, Siemens and VAT Group before moving into the banking sector. That journey gives him a particularly grounded perspective on what stays consistent across organisations regardless of industry, and what fundamentally changes when regulation, risk and operational complexity become part of everyday process design.This is a practical and thoughtful conversation about why process transformation succeeds or fails, the limitations of governance models that exist only on paper and what it actually takes to build operational ownership that people engage with rather than quietly work around.They discuss:Why most large organisations behave less like a single company and more like a collection of semi-autonomous silos with their own cultures, incentives and ways of workingWhy process ownership fails when it is treated as an administrative responsibility rather than something people are genuinely empowered to shape and influenceHow lightweight workflow tools and process prototypes can make governance tangible and help teams collaborate more effectively across functionsWhy continuous improvement and BPM work best when they are tightly connected rather than operating as separate disciplinesThe challenge of balancing innovation, customer experience and operational efficiency inside a highly regulated banking environment, and why Paavo sees regulation as a “design envelope” rather than the starting point for process designHow Bank Frick is moving away from document-centric compliance towards a process-centric operating model where processes become the primary source of truthWhy AI will increase the importance of BPM and process governance rather than replace it, particularly in regulated industries where accountability and human oversight still matterThis episode is full of practical insight for anyone working in BPM, operational excellence, transformation, governance or enterprise change, particularly those trying to balance structure, regulation and real operational usability in complex organisations.Host: Liam O’Neill, Managing Director at bpmdGuest: Paavo Heikkinen, Head of BPM and Change Management at Bank Frick