The 3-Step Process Documenter

Process!

Chapter 4 – The 3-Step Process Documenter, page 55.

Step 1: Identify Your Handful of Core Processes 

  • Remind everyone on the team that we are taking a 20/80 approach. 
  • We will focus our attention on the handful of core processes – five to twelve important things you do repeatedly – which make your organization unique and valuable.
  • Example List of Core Processes
    • HR 
    • Marketing 
    • Sales 
    • Acct Mgt/Cust Svc 
    • Ops 1 
    • Ops 2 
    • Ops 3 
    • Accounting 
    • Running the Business 

  • Special Note:
    • Common Question: What’s the difference between a “Proven Process” and a “Core Process”?
      • Answer: a “Proven Process” is part of your company’s marketing strategy. It is a 1-page visual illustration of your ideal customer experience from their perspective. 
      • If certain activities are important enough to callout in your Proven Process, they probably deserve consideration when identifying and documenting your Core Processes.

Leadership Team “Identify Core Processes” Exercise:

  1. Take 5 quiet minutes and record your own list. 
  2. Compile a list on a whiteboard. 
  3. Starting with the first item on the list, ask, “Is this one of our Core Processes?”
  • If “Yes” ask “What Should we call it?” 
  • If “No” ask “Is this a major step in some other core process?”
    • If “Yes” decide which other core process it belongs to and draw a line to the relevant core process. 
    • If “No” cross out the item. 
  • Go to the next item on the list and repeat the steps, begin by asking “Is this one of our Core Processes?” 
  • When you finish the prioritization exercise, you will end up with a list of core processes on the whiteboard that look something like this: 

  • Important: Once your team has decided on the core processes, get the team to agree on what you are going to call each of them, forever. 
  • To complete step one of the 3-Step Process Documenter, ask a member of your team to turn the final list from the whiteboard into a table of contents for the manual, share drive, and/or video library that – someday soon – will house your handful of documented simplified core processes.   

Step 2: Document and Simplify Each Core Process 

  • At the same meeting, and as a team:
    • Identify a Core Process Champion for the Company. 
    • Decide which core processes should be documented first. 
    • Decide which seat in your Accountability Chart will own the core process. 
    • Decide who is going to take ownership of documenting and simplifying each core process. 
    • Decide what the final product should look like. 
    • Decide when each core process will, as well as the entire project, be completed. 
    • Update your 3-Year Picture and 1-Year Plan and publicly commit to your team’s core process goals. 
  • Once the project team has created a draft of a documented and simplified core process, the project leader and/or the core process seat owner presents it to the leadership team for review, revision, and approval. 
  • What should the final process documentation look like? That’s up to the team.
    • Documents 
    • Workflow Diagram 
    • Series of images 
    • Infographics 
    • Checklists 
    • Videos 
    • Etc. 
  • Special Notes:
    • Make sure the team agrees on the timeline for documenting, simplifying, and getting each core process approved by the leadership team. 
    • When a company running on EOS wants to strengthen its Process Component, that broader initiative often shows up as one of the three to seven goals in the 1-Year Plan. 
    • With priorities for the year set, leadership team members are reminded every 90 days to prioritize the Rocks that will achieve the company’s goals for the year.   
    • So each quarter, documenting, simplifying, and getting core processes approved by the leadership team might be a company or individual rock. 
    • This core process journey typically takes companies between nine and twelve months to complete. 

  • Documentation
  1. Don’t just do something, stand there!
    1. Begin the documentation journey with one simple step. Simply observe. 
    2. “To acquire knowledge, one must study; but to acquire wisdom, one must observe.” – Marilyn vos Savant 
    3. The best way to start documenting and simplifying a core process is by taking time to truly understand it, from start to finish. 
    4. If you try to fix or optimize everything the first time you observe it, you’ll never see the big picture 
    5. The first thing you’ll notice is whether a consistent way of doing it already exists. 
  2. As you observe, keep asking yourself:
    • What seems to be working? 
    • What’s not working? 
    • Does that happen every time or just occasionally? 
  • Feel free to take notes, make drawings, take pictures, record a video, etc. 
  • At the end of the documentation ask yourself:
    • What is the objective of this process? (and how can we measure it?) 
    • What’s the first (and last) step of this process? 
    • Are we consistently getting the results we want? 
    • What are the keys to the success of this process? 
    • What causes problems? 
  • “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.” – Albert Einstein 
  • Document and Simplify:
    1. Keep this at a high level. 
    2. Stay focused on the major steps. 
    3. A major step is one of the five to twenty-five things you need to get right every time. 
    4. For each major step, briefly explain the who, what, when, where, and how with a series of sub-steps (some people call these Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs)). 
    5. About two to five bullets for each major step. 
    6. Think one-page checklist, not a three-ring binder. 
    7. Document the basics and build from there (over time). 

  • Pro Tips: Completing Step 2

  • Use an EOS tool call “Getting What You Want”:
    • Begin with the desired end in mind. 
    • Ask yourself, “What Do I Want from this Process?” 
    • State the desired outcome clearly, simply, and specifically. 
    • Work backward, recording only the steps that must be done well in order to produce the desired outcome. 
    • This tool can help you identify leading indicators – those activity-based numbers that predict the final results of the process. 

Leadership Team Review and Approve

  • Draft a documented, simplified core process to share with your leadership team. 
  • Meet with the leadership team to thoroughly review and approve the draft core process. 
  • This is an essential step for three reasons:

  • To get the process right
    • The most experienced and knowledgeable group in the company.
    • Many core processes span multiple departments. 
    • Ask questions, poke holes, and suggest improvements. 
    • “None of us are as smart as all of us.” – One Minute Manager 
  • To be 100% on the same page
    • To drive change and accountability, you’ll need to rely on the support of your fellow leaders. 
    • When they are included and committed, they’ll join you in driving accountability. 
  • To Save Time
    • When a team is aligned behind a core process with measurements, it saves time in the future when getting to the root causes of issues in the business. 

Leadership Team Review Meeting

  1. Share the documented and simplified core process with each member of the leadership team one week before the meeting. 
  2. Ask everyone to come prepared with questions, comments, and issues. 
  3. At the meeting, walk through the process one step and sub-step at a time. 
  4. Answer questions and resolve issues. 
  5. Conclude the meeting with a marked-up copy of the process and a deadline for producing a final copy. 

Step 3: Package (Make Them Easy to Find and Use) 

  • Now that you’ve documented, simplified, and approved your core processes, the next step is rolling them out to the entire organization.
    • Some people roll them out all at once. 
    • Others roll them out one core process at a time. 
  • Find the right format, medium, or platform by asking yourself:
    • “What format or medium best fits this kind of work?” 
    • “How, when, and where will my people be using these tools?
    • “Are they in the office? Or in the field?” 
    • “Are they at a desk in front of a screen all day? Or out in the field working with their hands?” 
    • “Is a document best? Or a checklist on a smartphone or tablet?” 
    • “Is it a document they can read better? Or is it a video they can watch over and over again?”
  • Many organizations have turned to video content with a video library:
    • YouTube 
    • Vimeo 
    • PlaybookBuilder 
    • Trainual 
    • Whale 
  • In the end, pick the tool and platform most likely to be simple, practical, and useful to the people who will be following the process every day. 

  • Make them easy to find
    • Now that you’ve selected the right format, platform, or medium, make these valuable tools easy to find and use. 
    • Locate them as close to where the work is being done as possible. 
    • Organize each process so that employees can quickly and reliably access exactly what they’re looking for. 
    • The answer here depends on how the process was packaged and how and where the work is being done. 
  • The final step in this process is giving your “blueprint” or “operating model” a name – something accurate, memorable, and maybe even compelling:
    • [Our Company] Way 
    • [Our Company] Playbook 

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