A Process-First or People-First Company?

We reg­u­lar­ly use process maps in meet­ings with our clients.

They are a great tool to clar­i­fy the best work that we do in our com­pa­ny, and to talk about best prac­tices. They cre­ate align­ment and pro­vide an oppor­tu­ni­ty for peo­ple to share and eval­u­ate new ideas that can help us improve the way we work – poten­tial­ly, bet­ter or faster or at a low­er cost or error rate.

Improv­ing process­es are help­ful as guide­lines for peo­ple to do great work.

But lead­ers can go too far when don’t trust their peo­ple to have good judg­ment or do their work effec­tive­ly. Then, they use and lay­er in more and more process­es, think­ing they are solv­ing their peo­ple problems.

The Bureau­cra­cy Ball

And that’s where the bureau­cra­cy ball begins to roll. Process on top of process, approvals on top of approvals. The next thing you know, order­ing cof­fee for the staff room is a three-page process requir­ing sev­en peo­ple to approve the trans­ac­tion — every week.

One orga­ni­za­tion we work with had mul­ti-page, mul­ti-col­umn check­lists for each employ­ee to com­plete, every week. These were designed for the least capa­ble per­son to fol­low, step by step, to get the job done.

This isn’t a peo­ple prob­lem. It’s a fail­ure of leadership.

Process First or Peo­ple First

As com­pa­nies grow they gen­er­al­ly go down one of two roads:

• A peo­ple-first com­pa­ny: A belief that there are high­ly capa­ble peo­ple to hire, and train. They trust in people’s char­ac­ter and their com­pe­tence to get the job done well and pro­vide room for peo­ple to have auton­o­my and use their brains.
• A process-first com­pa­ny: A belief that peo­ple can’t be trust­ed to make good deci­sions and think for them­selves. They are giv­en a paint-by-num­ber, step-by-step approach to every sin­gle thing, with check­lists, safe­ty mech­a­nisms and double-checks.

When process­es become too much, com­pli­cat­ed and hard to fol­low, they actu­al­ly make the work more dif­fi­cult and then lead­ers prove them­selves right about people.

It’s a bal­ance: enough process for amaz­ing peo­ple to be suc­cess­ful ver­sus build­ing incred­i­bly detailed process­es designed for peo­ple who are not nat­u­ral­ly capa­ble in the roles.

A bureau­crat­ic, con­strict­ed, process-first com­pa­ny is not a place high-per­form­ing A Play­ers want to work.

Ask Ques­tions

As a com­pa­ny grows, it’s easy to start out with one kind of cul­ture and end up as anoth­er. So, when things aren’t going well, it’s impor­tant to look at your process­es and ask:

• What is this process designed to do?
  • Does it work?
  • Is it too complicated?
• Has the busi­ness out­grown it?
• Is the right per­son in the right role?
• Is there a lead­er­ship problem?

The Chal­lenge

• Does the cul­ture of your com­pa­ny default to more process or to more capa­ble people?

Addi­tion­al blogs

• How to Recruit & Retain Peo­ple in the Cur­rent Economy
• Teach Peo­ple to Think for Themselves

Old­er Podcasts

• Jim Collins’ Char­ac­ter­is­tics of the Right Peo­ple in the Right Seats
• What’s More Impor­tant: Right Peo­ple or Right Strategy?