The difficult process of identifying processes

In conversation after conversation with people who are attempting to identify their company's business processes, usually for the subsequent purpose of improving the performance of these processes, all agree that it is an extraordinarily difficult undertaking. What's going on here? Why are efforts to identify and map an organization's processes so fraught with difficulty and what can be done about it? The quick answer is that definitions don't define, names don't identify, examples aren't exemplary, and an organization's processes are essentially unknowns (but, thank goodness, not unknowable). This brief paper is an attempt to make clearer the meaning of process as it is used in terms such as ‘business process’, ‘business process improvement’, ‘continuous process improvement’, ‘business process reengineering’, and many more. The ultimate objective is to help make the task of identifying business processes simpler, easier, and more successful.