Anyone who has ever tried to assemble a bookcase from that well-known Swedish furniture chain knows there are two kinds of instructions. Those that actually help you complete the task on your own, and those that, after reading them, leave you sitting on the floor surrounded by nineteen dowels and thirty screws, staring blankly at the drawing of a little man with an Allen wrench, not knowing where to start.
Organizations also have their own instructions, in the form of processes. And just as often, instead of streamlining work, shortening decision-making time, and eliminating silly mistakes – they turn out to be a burden.
In our practice, we work with companies that have very different attitudes toward processes. Some believe that a written procedure is the best answer to every problem. Others treat it as bureaucratic baggage that needs to be gotten rid of. Meanwhile, as is usually the case, the truth lies somewhere in between.
Not every process deserves to exist
I’ll start with an opinion that some managers might consider heresy. Not every task we perform in a company requires a formalized process. If we formalize a process just for the sake of formalizing it – so that it appears in some folder or document – then it is most likely a completely unnecessary process. If it concerns very simple behaviors, obvious functions, or the minutiae of the organization’s daily life, then writing it down and turning it into a document usually makes no sense.
A written process is not valuable in and of itself, at least not until it measurably improves the work of the organization or at least a part of it.
Good and almost always necessary processes include, for example, those “at the interface” – organizing activities between positions or departments that must collaborate despite differing work rhythms or nature. Or those that have the greatest and measurable impact on generating profit.
„Not every activity we perform in a company requires a documented process”.
I don’t mean to say that, for example, the process of recruiting a new employee is unimportant or doesn’t need to be organized. However, in most cases, we’ll place the sales process higher in the hierarchy because it’s what feeds the company every day, while we only initiate recruitment once in a while.
Bad, Unnecessary, and Nasty Processes
At the other end of the spectrum lies the category of processes that are universally bad, unnecessary, and downright harmful. A prime example of such a bad process is one that was written down long ago, lies gathering dust somewhere, and today hardly anyone is even aware of its existence. Right next to them are processes that are too complicated and incomprehensible, which cannot be explained in two sentences to a new team member. Finally, we must add to this bag of misfortunes processes written as they might look in an idealized world, but having nothing to do with everyday reality.
This is a very common practice. We sit down to work on a process map, sketch out perfect flows, give beautiful names to the successive stages, add arrows and colors, and then close the file with a satisfying sense of a job well done.
The problem is that this elegant diagram doesn’t describe our organization – at best, it’s a dream of an organization. This is dangerous because, by referring to this idyllic vision, we lose touch with the harsh reality. We have no idea where the bottleneck lies, because on paper everything flows as it should. The result is that when I talk to people who are knee-deep in a given process, I regularly hear: “No, it doesn’t work like that at all. It would be nice, but that’s not how it looks.”
Until we have a process that’s realistically mapped out – one that describes reality, not wishful thinking – we can’t answer any meaningful questions. We don’t know what can be improved in the process, or even if anyone still needs it.
When a process gains weight
It’s not uncommon for a good process to undergo a transformation and only after some time turn into dead weight. We start with something sensible, such as a process supporting collaboration between two departments. Over time, we add more steps, checks, iterations, and stages – until at some point we realize we’ve bred a huge, cumbersome beast that won’t pull us anywhere anymore.
The reason is usually mundane. No one in the company found the time to sit down and, at the right moment, break the bloated process down into smaller sections. Every new tool, new situation, and new person is added to the old, clearly cumbersome diagram. And once the diagram has ballooned to terrifying proportions, no one dares to touch it.
On top of that, we sometimes forget about the decision-makers along the way. We have beautifully described executors, we’ve assigned tasks to everyone, and we’ve outlined their roles, but at the very heart of the process –where something needs to be approved or rejected – there’s a gaping void. And that’s because some decisions must be made by someone not formally included in the process: a director, a manager, a board member, or a manager from another department. Their influence isn’t visible anywhere on the diagram – they haven’t been accounted for – but in practice, they’re the ones responsible for whether the next step happens at all and when.
The result is predictable. The process ceases to be complete and drags on. In turn, the people involved in it are justified in feeling as though they’re constantly stumbling over an invisible obstacle.
Don't just fix the symptoms. Start with a diagnosis
Important and More Important Things
Someone might ask a provocative question: Is it possible to have too many good processes? Yes, it is, and it’s not a particularly rare occurrence. All it takes is for us to incorrectly define what a truly essential process is and fail to consider how individual processes influence one another.
After a while, it turns out that our company is full of “super-important” processes. Each one has its own priority, its own managers, and demands everyone’s attention. Then they start to clash with one another because someone failed to anticipate that, in a given area, the processes are linked by a shared resource or person. At some point, we find ourselves in a situation where bottlenecks arise in places where they would normally never exist.
How do we know if there are already too many processes in the company? This is one of the harder questions, but there are a few clear signs. The most obvious one: in their daily work, people constantly have to wonder what the exception to the rule is. They reach for instructions too often instead of just taking action. Solutions cease to be intuitive. Every time an employee has to consult a written procedure, they lose a few minutes and a bit of patience. Over time, this builds up, leading to a lasting decline in motivation.
The second warning sign is sometimes visible even outside the organization. The amount of paperwork or the need to standardize every action means that people are no longer able to perform their work normally. Imagine a customer service representative who, instead of simply answering a customer’s question, must inform the regional manager by sending an official email in a specific format – just to determine whether they’re even allowed to respond.
If the steps that were supposed to optimize work in theory actually block or slow it down in practice – and after all, as we’ve established, processes are implemented to streamline operations – then something has gone very, very wrong. We must honestly admit that either we’ve created too many procedures, or we’ve designed them terribly.
Before you add a position
How do you handle it when procedures aren’t working? In such situations, managers are very quick to reach for two simple solutions: they add more people, or they try to automate everything they can think of with tools. Both can, of course, make sense under the right circumstances, but starting with these is usually just an attempt to work around a deeper problem.
The problem with adding a new position is that it adds another pair of hands to operate a machine that’s already jammed and unable to function at full capacity. On the other hand, attempting to automate an untested process will only cause errors to multiply faster. Instead of solving the problem, we’re scaling it up. The same bottlenecks appear more frequently or in new places.
Before we add people or spend money on more tools, it is essential to conduct a thorough, multi-faceted review of the process. Check whether the problem is related to a specific task, position, tool, or perhaps the flow of information. See exactly where something can be improved. Determine at exactly which stage the work stops flowing as it should. Calculate how much automation will cost and whether it is truly cost-effective on the scale of the entire process.
Finally, there is a question that requires a bit of courage: as an organization, do we even need this process anymore? It may turn out that it causes a lot of confusion, wastes people’s time, and generates costs, but in reality, it hasn’t solved anything for a long time. It made sense once, but the world around us and the company itself have changed, while the process remained stuck in the previous decade. Throwing a process in the trash is also a form of optimization, though we don’t always think of it that way.
If we skip the review stage, there’s a non-zero chance that our efforts will only exacerbate the problem.
Endless work
I know this will sound unpleasant to everyone who has an overwhelming need to close out topics and check items off a list, but work on a process is never finished. If you look at a diagram you’ve painstakingly created, thinking that the procedure outlined in this form will remain with the company until the end of its days – you are almost certainly mistaken.
The nature of a process is that it can be optimized virtually endlessly. Of course, this doesn’t mean it’s worth fighting over every percentage point. Boosting the efficiency of a process running at 90% to 91% won’t always be worth the effort. Especially if trying to squeeze more out of the process carries the risk of reducing its stability or transparency.
„Work on a process is never finished”.
But even if we don’t plan to optimize, the process should at least be constantly monitored; we should check how it truly functions within the organization’s current context and, if necessary, adapt it to evolving realities. Constant review is a reasonable minimum that we can never do without.
All of this is to ensure we don’t wake up one Monday to find documentation describing a company in a form that hasn’t existed for a long time. With processes that no one questions, but only because no one knows them. Just because we identified an issue five years ago – perhaps even accurately – doesn’t mean the problems are in exactly the same places today. When positions, structure, personnel, or the scale of operations change, bottlenecks can burrow through the company like a mole – creating sinkholes in surprising places.
To conclude: processes cannot be mere dry documents. They should be thought of more as dynamic phenomena, or even as living organisms. They grow and evolve alongside the company, or… they will slowly begin to eat it from the inside out. It all depends on how we approach their maintenance.
At Louder Higher, we regularly help companies separate the processes that actually get the job done from those that merely mimic effectiveness. If you have a feeling that something isn’t quite right in your organization – let’s talk.
