As a company grows, its processes most scale.
Or, they can decay.
Here are 4 things you can do to make sure your processes scale alongside your company.
🧍♀️ 1. Focus on People
99% of process problems start with people.
The right team following bad process will get the job done.
The wrong team with perfect process will fail anyways.
Any process audit has to start by understanding your people.
Start with your team, not your tools.
👑 2. Start at the Top
The people usually blamed for process are the ones at the bottom
But process comes from the top.
When investigating a failing process, always start with leadership and work your way down.
The bottleneck is usually near the top of the bottle.
⏳ 3. Explore the Fractal Hourglass
At every process level, there are four types of people involved:
– Stakeholders
– Executive
– Manager
– Contributors
These form an hourglass shape.
1. The top half is concerned with Strategy.
2. The bottom half is concerned with Tactics.
☝️ On the top half of the hourglass, the Executive sets the strategy and communicates it up to one or more Stakeholders.
They decide where the ship is headed.
If the destination is the wrong one upon arrival, they’re the ones at fault.
If the Strategy has failed, the Executive has failed.
👇 On the bottom half, the Manager receives the strategy from the Executive and translates it into tactics for the Contributors to implement.
They decide what direction the ship should point to reach its destination.
If the ship doesn’t arrive at the correct destination, they’re the ones at fault.
If the Tactics have failed, the Manager has failed.
This pattern starts at the top and repeats itself at each process layer.
A Fractal Hourglass.
🌹 4. Make Lifecycle Charts
When investigating process, we often start with our org chart.
But to establish clear processes, we need to understand our process lifecycle.
Consider the following questions as we move down the Hourglass:
– Where does a need originate?
– Who prioritizes needs?
– Who is responsible for describing the need to the team?
– Who is responsible for conceptualizing an answer to the need?
– Who is responsible for executing that concept?
And then, on the way back up the Hourglass:
– Who is responsible for making sure the deliverable matches the concept?
– Who is responsible for making sure that concept responds to the described need?
– Who is responsible for making sure the described need actually matches the original?
Visualize the answers in Lifecycle Charts.
Chart them out. Then assign someone to each seat and establish accountability.
☝️ As companies grow, processes age. As they age, they can mature.
Or they can decay.
To keep your processes fresh, make a habit of reviewing them.
And then:
🧍♀️ 1. Focus on People
👑 2. Start at the Top
⏳ 3. Explore the Fractal Hourglass
🌹 4. Build Lifecycle Charts