Ignoring Process Needs
Working with hundreds of organizations over the years, we’ve discovered a few common excuses for not documenting processes.
- Don’t have time
- The project is too big
- Not sure the effort is worth the return
Don’t let these excuses determine the future of your company. Process documentation is no easy task, but it’s worth the investment. Providing your team with the necessary information to complete their day to day work safely, effectively, and efficiently equates to improved business operations.
Getting Started: YOLO Like Leeroy Jenkins
The fist step is simply getting started. This may sound like an overwhelming task, but when compared to the potential downfalls associated with not documenting processes, it’s achievable. It most likely will not be perfect after the first attempt, and that’s OK. Getting started and creating checkpoints along the way allows you to constantly adapt and overcome challenges to help build your team.
To get you started, here are 3 Considerations for Process Planning
Video Transcription
Hey, it’s Trace again from HowFactory. Over the years as I’ve walked out in and worked at shops across the country and especially building HowFactory, I’ve seen some trends that have taken place when people try to get all (of) their processes and want to take hold of that situation.
Trend number 1 is people say “you know what, I don’t have time.” And that’s a really big problem because we’ve got a lot of stuff on our plate and it does take some time to get all of those processes and best practices recorded.
The next thing people worry about, the fact it’s too big. It literally is an elephant. These processes are a huge task to be able to get under control.
And the last thing that people think about is “You know what, we’ve got all of these frustrated people out there and is this really going to make things better.” And you know what, it’s not going to get better the longer we waidt for it.
So what I encourage people to do first of all is take after my friend Leeroy Jenkins. You’ll see a link in this video if you want to check this out. What Leeroy did, is when everyone is sitting around talking about the problem, he yells “LEEROY JENKINS,” and he gets out there and he YOLOs it and he gets after it and he actually starts making some progress on it. Now in the video it doesn’t work out very well, but it’s still a great lesson to just get in there and start doing something.
The next thing you need to do is know that tackle the lowest hanging fruit on the tree. Think about it a little bit and find something that’s going to be able to create some value for your company right away. Maybe it’s a process on a way you can make your safety huddles better. Maybe it’s some sort of continual improvement problem that you’re having in your quality control or something like that. But pick one thing that you can make better today and just start doing it.
And then what you’re going to find out, is slowly, you’re going to start making progress. Things are going to get better. So don’t think about it being too big, don’t worry about not having time. It’s not going to get better. Just start making some progress today.
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