If no documented process, start with an interview

When a child is first learning to crawl, it is also starting to learn to talk. The child will talk long before it can write. So it is not a surprise that when teaching people in a business how to improve the business, we start with talking to them. First, can they articulate what it is that they do today for the business? If not, then this person is in the "Crawl" stage.

To start with, interview them and create an outline for your use in the next level. You may need to interview them one more than once or continuously to understand everything that they do since they may not remember until they get to that point in their process.

Also, gather examples of what is written down for later use and analysis.

Note people at this level may have very little time to do this and may be very resistant to anyone looking at their processes. If so, see if you can get them to brag about what they do. If so, see if you can get them to brag about it to others over lunch. Get people of similar roles together over lunch to brag. Then get people of different roles together over lunch and have them talk about the interactions between the groups. Hopefully, you will hear "that's a great idea". At minimum, hearing about what others do may start other people thinking about how them do things and result in improvements. Try to avoid "that is stupid" (since this is demotivating) and turn it around to "how would you improve on this" or "how to do you do this".

Remember each person will be in a different place so it is ok that there are difference in how they work so long as you get the same results in the same amount of time for the same level of complexity for the same amount of compensation.

Also, remember that some people are verbal and others are visual, and/or kinesthetic learns. For the visual learns, having it write down at the next step may help them to see what you are getting at. For the kinesthetic learner, the act of doing it over and over again is the way that they learn. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning_style]