The constraints of the BCM

I have a few criticizms of the BCM and heat map. In studying strategy, we learn about core competencies. We learn that it is important to evaluate the core competency of your organization and to protect this competency and to enhance it ahead of your competitors. It is the thing you have that your competitors do not. It is complex and inimitable and it might not fit into a grid or be something you can put into words. But it is essential that you make decisions around it, you expand with it in mind, and you never outsource it.  

The BCM requires you to break down the components of your business both vertically and horizontally. It ignores the relationships between departments and the interconnectedness of the tasks and responsibilities. The heat map assigns priority to certain areas based on their potential to affect revenues, costs and how differentiated they are as a competency. 

While I can see where this is a useful exercise, I think it over-simplifies the structure of the organization too much. Targeting one business component at one level of accountability ignores the fact that a competency is not necessarily as neat and clean as the BCM might suggest. It segments parts of the business as if they function alone. I believe that corporations create a competitive advantage not based on how they carry out certain tasks at certain levels and how responsibility and accountability are measured, but rather how they structure and interconnect the different departments and levels of their organization in a way that gives them an edge on their competitors.