Writing down (or up) what you do

Once you can say what you do and do what you say you do repeatably, you are ready to start documenting what you do.

But why? What if you get run over by a bus tomorrow, how will the person that ends up doing your job know how to do the job as well as you have learned to do it? In addition, in order to grow the business, more than one person needs to know how to do a job to keep up with the demand of a growing company.

Start simple! Start with a simple check list as an aid to make sure that the steps of clear, complete, and the ordering. Once you are sure that you have the right information, you can continue to expand it into more of a guide. Note that the amount that you write should depend on how frequently you have to rewrite it. Change is inevitable and increasing at an alarming rate.

Note that it is important to use the concept of a "Guide". Each person that uses the guide will add their own way of doing things to accomplish the same end results and each project may require a slightly different use of the guide. Thus the reason for calling it a "Guide".

Once you can document what each person does then you are ready to document the interactions between their roles or the dependencies in the processes between individuals. Note that usually there is some level of information or physical result that is passed between the individuals, some times referred to as a "deliverable". Eventually you need to document what these deliverables are so each person is clear about what they need to provide and what they can expect from the other person. Note a diagramming technique called "swim lanes" may be very helpful here to get down the high level process between organizations. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swim_lane]

In order to keep the complexity manageable, each person maintains a written process for that role. To be able to manage the complexity between roles, just the dependencies and deliverables between roles should be documented in a higher level document. This way the lower level role processes can change without having to change the higher level document so long as they don't change the dependencies or deliverables. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_process_modeling]

At this higher level of abstraction of the dependencies and deliverables between roles, the number of items to track can be measured in the hundreds. It may be useful to form the dependencies and deliverables into group sometimes referred to as "stage"'s (or phases).

Note that you will need to also start to document a consistent terminology that everyone agrees to so that they can understand what the written materials mean.

Note also that the proof that a documented process has been internalized by an individual is to have them teach it to someone else (and basically run off at the mouth about the documented process).

Note that it is really hard to measure accurately and see historical trends until you have can write things down. The information that you can have written down in such a fashion as to aid your analysis later will determine the level of optimization that you can achieve. In order to do this, you need to consider the tools that you are using and how they will be used at the next level for "Racing".

Also if you have written it down, there is a less of drag on you by new employees since they can read (then do) what you written down to do.


This also accelerates getting new personnel up to speed as fast as possible by handing them a doucment on the first day of work and say read and do these things first. New hires will feel less lost in their new environment if you have a check list of things for them to do in what order to get up to speed.


You are now ready to "Run".

Doing what you say that you do

Once the person can say what they do for the business, do they in fact do that?

Until they do can repeatable do what they say that they do, the value of writing it down is significantly diminished.

But how do you know if they do what they saw they do unless you write it down or capture it in some format.

In these modern times, one could capture the interview in an audio file or even a video file.

A sign that a person has really internalized a new process is when they can articulate the new process themselves without any aids or even better teach it to someone else. You can use the later as a reason to capture the person on audio or video to help others learn the process.

See if you can get them to teach the process to another member. If they can teach the same thing repeatibly then you can capture the process. If not, hopefully this will demonstrate the person the need to write it down or otherwise capture the process.

But to verify that the person really does what they say they do, the auditor will probably need some sort of check list to check off the pieces of the process for consistency.

So if they refuse to write it down or capture it in some format, do it yourself and get their feedback. At least if it is written down, they may argue with what was written down and tell you what is wrong so you can correct it.

Note that a person may be too busy to write things down in some form because a process out of control takes much more energy to control than a process in control. So bring a person in to help write down in simple form and organize the thinking may allow the person in the process to have more time to work on the next level and contribute to this improvement process.

This is not unlike with a child where the parent helps them stand at the edge of a bed, couch, or table or puts them in a modern day walker. The extra helps the child to learn faster and gain the strength to move on to the next level -- walking.

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]

Starting where people are

First thing to realize is that every person in a company comes with a different set of experiences and thus is starting from a different place about how to do their job and how it should fit with the everyone else's work. So if you are trying to get a business organized and moving in a consistent way, you need to first come to this realization.


Carnegie Mellon University has spent a great deal of work on their Capability Maturity Model (CMM) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capability_Maturity_Model#Capability_Maturity_Model_Structure]. This model helps to classify whole companies. The first level of improvement has to do with doing the same process reputably. The next level of improvement has to do with just getting written down what people do. The point here is that each person is at a different level. Some people may not have any process at all because they have always been told what to do while others may have something written done to vary levels of details. Thus each person needs to be working on their next level of "capability" before a whole company can reach that level. Why not just get everyone to jump to the desired level? Well, this leads to the title of this blog. Would you expect that a baby just learning to crawl could just suddenly start racing? Of course not, first they have to learn to walk then run then they can learn to race.


This is also a natural level of resistance to change. The more you change a way you want someone to do something or behave, the more resistance you get [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resistance_to_change]. So you need to take a person from where they are at in "capability" and focus on their next level, not just where the company wants everyone to be. Unfortunately far to often, the company suddenly wants to race because of financial or competitive pressures and the well intended champion fails because of the level of resistance from the organization. In short, it's like inertia but also like herding cats. It takes a lot of energy to move a company from one point to the next, especially if there is no past history or cultural of "learning" [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning_organization]



Most books on management teach you how to "run" or "race" since the authors are typically in a publish or perish situation and must talk about the latest findings on how to "race". So this blog will talk about getting people to "walk" rather than "crawl" and then to "run" rather than "walk". See this blog for classical book references on these areas: http://mosherslawetal.blogspot.com/