Processes. The word carries many associations. For me these associations used to be negative. I used to think of bureaucracy, engineering, boxes, factory and complex charts. Today, I know that processes are the memory of any organization. I think most people value their memory highly and most of us dread the thought of losing it.
To me business processes, if developed and maintained adequately, are the sum of the cumulative learnings of any organization. Among humans we call this memory, experience and cognitive ability.
Companies with leading end to end processes can endure high attrition, churn in product offering and even challenging competitive moves without losing their position in the market. Although processes imply rigor and inflexibility I would argue the reverse. If you don’t know your base line, how do you map where you want to go? How do you focus on the incremental change if everything is incremental?
Look around you and ask a painful question. What happens if all your staff died in a plane crash. Would anyone else be able to recreate your successful business practices? Or are your business practices safely tucked away in the heads of your brilliant people?
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