Process: making the right things happen at the right time

Objective

‘Process’ describes a planned sequence of events for a given circumstance. The mere suggestion of it may turn many leaders off because it implies an attention to planned detail and structure that may seem the very opposite of the flair and excitement of leadership. Some may believe that detailed process belongs to the realms of technology-intensive engineering or manufacturing.

But consider five, apparently quite unconnected, challenges requiring specific, timetabled and planned outcomes:

• making colleagues redundant in a manner consistent with employment legislation;
• the launch of a major new product on time and to budget;
• the delivery of quarter-by-quarter sales on target;
• answering customer complaints about poor service and providing appropriate apologies or recompense;
• transfer of colleagues from one office location to another on time and on budget.

All these examples involve different groups of employees (respectively HR, product development, sales, customer service and facilities) and yet they must all meet clear, and in many cases cost-sensitive, deadlines. They will best meet these successfully if they have a clear idea of what is required and when, and who is doing it.

Your objective across all your colleagues is to ensure they understand that goals are best met – whether for one-off projects or ongoing activities – when tasks are clearly mapped within process structures.

Context

All businesses have a simple goal – delivering the highest revenue at the lowest cost. This is achieved through some core steps:

• identification of market opportunities;
• creation and delivery of products and services;
• appropriate after-sales service and support.

Managing what becomes a development–sales–support ‘cycle’ demands a preoccupation with the allocation of resources – put simply, where and when to invest most wisely, and how to deliver an optimum level of sales and margin. This budgetary preoccupation is, however, sometimes too often focused on what is spent rather than how it is spent – attempts to reduce costs, for example, often focus on supplier cost reduction programmes or staff retrenchment rather than on why cost is being incurred.

An organisation or business unit should understand which actions it is taking that incur cost. It should see these in the eyes of its customers (internal and external) and ask if they are receiving the service they require. It should also ask itself what cost is being incurred through remedying past failures, poor decisions or faulty planning.

Confronting the extent to which costs are being incurred as a price of failure (sometimes called ‘the cost of quality’) should be your priority. These include:

• sales lost through inadequate products or poor sales delivery;
• excessive costs incurred through confusion or duplication of processes;
• costs incurred in remedying after-sales faults and complaints.

You should never accept today’s costs as the legitimate costs for your business or function. You should challenge your team to appraise their processes – the organisation of their actions – so that they deliver ‘right first time’ across all teams.

Challenge

There are two types of negative reactions to the concept of process. The first is emotional – ‘process’ sounds dull. Rigorous attention to detail can seem unexciting and bureaucratic. Worse, it may suggest a ‘playing by the book’ mentality that discourages risk and entrepreneurship.

Not attending to appropriate process is an easy way out, and a quick one. Not anticipating consequences reveals a ‘mañana’ attitude. Above all else, responding to the challenges and dramas that arise from a lack of process can actually be exciting. For certain kinds of staff, riding to the rescue in a tough situation is more motivating than engaging in detailed planning to avoid the problem in the first place.

The second type of challenge to process is an organisational–cultural one, and it affects organisations in three distinct phases.

• Start-up – for a new business, process may seem a luxury amidst the hurly-burly of getting going and keeping afloat.
• Growth enterprise – for a business growing quickly, it may be difficult to keep its processes aligned to the demands of its customers, and it may not know how to keep going and take stock at the same time.
• Mature business – for an established business, the paradox may be that it does have established processes but they are the wrong ones. The appearance of an established process may actually have become a barrier to successful delivery.

Your role as leader is to understand and articulate the power of process irrespective of the phase your organisation or team is in and to demonstrate instead its overriding value. Your special challenge is to show how process does not undermine being smart, nimble or entrepreneurial – rather that process is smart, nimble and entrepreneurial.

Success

If the primacy of process is successfully understood, a given team will:

• question whether process is relevant to a particular activity or not;
• embed process in any activity rather than see it as a separate, optional add-on;
• define and record a process for a given activity, with specified accountabilities;
• automate process steps where this is achievable and acceptable to stakeholders;
• extend the process to include external suppliers and customers;
• review the process with stakeholders before implementing it, if it is new;
• continuously re-engineer the given process based on feedback;
• create Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to measure the process;
• train colleagues where appropriate in using the given process;
• calculate the costs associated with each step in the process.

To reinforce the importance of process, you must say that it is important to all colleagues, and must constantly reinforce this message through actions and review. Your key messages will be:

• to use and advocate the term ‘process’ publicly – do not shy away from talking about what might be seen as a mundane, boring or technical term;
• to demand attention to process from your team – talk about process in your team meetings in the context of overall performance;
• to require process reviews of all key operational processes – be seen to engage in the detail of process and do so on a regular basis;
• to monitor process failures – know, through formal reporting mechanisms, where process failures are apparent and how they are being addressed;
• to be unforgiving of failure – demand a culture of continuous improvement, and show that underachievement is never acceptable;
• to measure the costs of failure – failures should not be seen simply as mistakes that can be rectified and re-engineered away; ensure they are seen as having a cost that should be measured.

Successful attention to process requires an enormous investment of time. You must also ensure that your team has members who can understand, articulate and lead process – who understand that it is the life-blood of their capacity to succeed.

Pitfalls

The importance of process can be undermined in two quite opposite respects.

• Process and complacency – the temptation is great for leaders to assume that once processes are in place they can sit back and watch them operate. But process is never finished, it has no end-point. In as much as it demands a relentless attention to detail, it demands a relentless attention to review and renewal. You must expect to focus as much on process change as process implementation to maintain the momentum of continuous improvement. The alternative is that the very process the business heralds becomes its Achilles’ heel.
• Process and atrophy – without careful explanation, the importance of process may be seen as the primacy of risk-averse planning. In the desire to do things the right way, the business loses its focus on doing the right things. More specifically it might sacrifice its entrepreneurial or creative flair. You must ensure that no one believes that process is a replacement for ideas, but very often a support for their effective realisation.

Much of leadership is actually about the imbalance of relentlessly making the same points time and time again. The approach to process needs to be nuanced – achieving the right attention to focus while remaining creative.

Leaders’ checklist

• Talk about process regularly – do not shirk referring to a potentially dull subject.
• Make process commercial – link it to sales and profits so it is never seen as an end in itself.
• Talk about process to your team collectively and to each of your direct reports – don’t allow ‘process’ to be seen as ‘belonging’ to one particular function or discipline.
• Participate directly in process reviews and seek to know about process failures.
• Test out processes yourself where it is possible – see them from the customer’s perspective.
• Celebrate process champions – they can all too often be unsung heroes.