Process

I was thinking the other day about the need for articulating processes and procedures in a company. Why do we need to do that? Is the company not functioning without the documentation? What is the value-add (or ROI) for investing the time and resources on documenting processes? As an executive have you ever explained this need?

Every organization has their own silos of knowledge. In a typical start-up more of the action is performed at the spur of the moment and as the organization-grow in terms of human-resources than revenues is when you feel the need to have documented processes and procedures.

Now for a very large organization, you again need these sets of processes and procedures documented because there is a human-turnover. If you had a static workforce which never ever left the company, gave them instructions once and let them do their jobs everyday for the rest of their lives then we would not ever need such processes and procedures.

The question however is what is the ROI for a company that has never invested in documenting processes and procedures? How do you calculate the ROI in this case? Remember, there is always an ROI for an investment. The ROI can be tangible or intangible and may be spread over many many years or in some cases over a lifetime (for example the Green Company revolution - more in a later blog). With that being said, break the ROI if it is spread over many years into some form of short-term strategic initiatives and some long-term strategic initiatives and use these as the measure to communicate to the larger audience the need to develop documented processes and procedures.

There is no magic bullet - you need to invest time and document your policies / processes and procedures in order to build a long-term healthy company and update them periodically to be current. Period.

So, the next time around, you find some holes in the processes of your company, instead of letting it go, how are you going to use that to use it to help your company grow? Think about it !