When many of us see change coming, we’re not sure what to do.  We sometimes fear or mistrust change, or we put off big problems because they’re “too much all at once”, and we stick with outdated, inefficient tools, methods, and processes.

“Better the devil you know than the one you don’t.”
Anon.

We sense that the way we go about developing policies and procedures isn’t producing satisfactory results, yet we keep at it. We can’t afford to continue doing what we’ve been doing if we’re to remain competitive.

Now we proceed with the ten-step program for developing procedures:

1. Understand the process – walk through it (literally) and map it out. See for yourself where the bottlenecks are. Determine where your resources are going to waste, not value. If an activity doesn’t add value, customers won’t pay for it.
2. Estimate the resources you need to craft the procedure (people, time, etc.). Set your goals and milestones.
3. Now, document (author) the process.  For the best effect, combine pictures and words: either is good but together, they’re great!
4. Once you author the procedure, have the process “doers” and their manager review it.  Note: Here is where a document management system can improve your review process.
5. Based on the results of the procedure review, revise the procedure.
6. Repeat #4 and #5 once. Resist the urge to keep “tweaking” documents before releasing them – there is no such thing as a perfect procedure.
7. Next, have other interested parties review the procedure (for example, the managers of the processes immediately before and after the process in question).
8. Revise the procedure one last time, if necessary.
9. Gain final approval of the procedure from top management. In the case of a small business (or SMB), that might be the owner, the president, your chief financial officer, and others.  Top management needs to be involved because every process – hence, every procedure – is a reflection of the company’s vision, mission, and objectives.
10. Once the procedure is approved, release it to the company.  Releasing a procedure involves:

• Announcing the procedure to the entire company;
• Circulating it, or making sure it’s readily accessible to employees;
• Training the doers – those responsible for carrying out the procedure, and their managers; and
• Explaining the procedure to those who may be affected indirectly (for example, one process forward and one back).

Keep Procedures Fresh and Meaningful

As we said in step #6, perfect procedures don’t exist. The business environment changes, your company changes, and your procedures need to reflect that. Once you’ve released a procedure, there are two more things you must do:

11. Conduct a periodic procedure review. You review a procedure when something really big comes up that has a direct impact (a new or revised regulation, an audit finding, a new owner, etc.), correct? Oftentimes, nothing comes up – or we don’t notice when they do. That’s why we need to routinely review procedures (a rule of thumb is to review annually).

12. After the review, revise the procedure (if needed), review it, approve it, and release it.

What about you? Have any questions or comments? What do you – or would you – do differently? Do you have a system for writing and managing procedures – one you’d like to share with us?

Customers Say They Want A System for Sharing their Day-to-Day Operating Documents while Maintaining Control, Traceability and Compliance

Our customers cite ‘organizational improvement’ as their main reason why they purchase policies and procedures. From many conversations we have gleaned that customers want to implement a system for continuous improvement and compliance. In a system, procedures are continuously reviewed, revised, and updated. New issues need to be identified, now procedures written. Old procedures need to be replaced by new procedures.

To remain compliant with your industry standards, government regulations, and quality requirements such as ISO, document changes must be managed and traceable through the document management cycle: DRAFT | REVIEW | APPROVE | RELEASE. This cycle is the heart of compliant document work flow.

So Bizmanualz is currently testing an on-line document management software for driving document management and compliance. Because the software is available as an on-line service, organizations of any size can manage and share their policies, procedures, work instructions and other operating documents.

During this test period, Bizmanualz is providing a few customers with access to a prototype of our new document management software. The customers are providing feedback which is helping us improve the first release of the product which will take place soon (If you are interested in testing the software, please read this post. Also, see our frequently asked questions (FAQ), or call us at (314) 863-5079.)

For more background on how document management software can help you, please see our blog.

Walking Through Bizmanualz On-Line

In our pre-release testing program, we’re asking testers to perform common operations, such as logging in, setting up users (assigning permissions, etc.), loading documents, and organizing them. The work flow starts with drafting documents and includes reviewing, revising, approving, and releasing documents.

The following “use case” illustrates work flow in our new software. Use cases like this are provided to testers so that all testers are following a similar path, which makes it easier to evaluate their responses. As the software matures, users will need less instruction and use-cases will be more general.

To log in to the Bizmanualz On-line editing module, click on a link and enter a user name and a password that you received via e-mail. When logged in, users will see the following ‘Home’ Screen (figure 1), which shows announcements posted by the administrator and other users of the system.

Figure 1: Click screen shots for larger images.

To manage a document, click on the document tab (figure 2), which is the second tab from the left. Then click on the production department folder in the left-hand navigation to show production-department documents (Bizmanualz templates that you purchase come pre-loaded and you can upload your own documents).

Figure 2

Expand the folders by clicking on the plus sign in the Department navigation on the left-hand side (figure 2) to show its contents and browse for documents in the list in the main window (figure 3).

Figure 3

Figure 4

Figure 5

The document itself may be viewed from this window by clicking on the binoculars icon, or edited by clicking on the document-edit icon. Delete the document by clicking on the delete icon, which will issue a warning before deleting the document.

Managing Document Workflow

Workflow in the Bizmanualz On-line system is essentially a three-stage process of accept/reject review, approve/reject revision, and release/obsolete revision. We will look at the basics of each step here.

This guide assumes that you have created users, and set permissions at a department level. See those use cases for full information.

Set up Document Permissions

Here we will review the optional step of setting permissions at the document level, which override department-level permissions governing access to a group of documents.

System administrators can set all permissions for themselves and all users. They can submit drafts (DRAFT), accept or reject reviews (REVIEW), approve or reject revisions (APPROVE), and release documents (RELEASE).  This cycle—Draft | Review | Approve | Release—is consistent with all document management protocols, industry standards, government regulations and quality standards.

By default, authors cannot review or release their own work. But administrators can change work flow permissions and defaults for single documents in the People tab (figure 6), overriding department or group-level permissions. If you are logged in as an administrator, you will have access to the People tab while you are on the Details view of any document.

Figure 6

In this example, the administrator has granted himself full permissions, and another employee Approver and Reviewer permissions, overriding permission defaults.

Accepting and Rejecting Reviews

Dan has permissions as an author, which means that he can ‘Submit draft’, which causes the ‘Accept Review’ and ‘Reject Review’ buttons to light up (figure 7) per the permissions he set in the previous screen.

Figure 7

E-mail Notification

Reviewers are notified by e-mail when documents are ready for them to review. E-mails are sent when the document has to be submitted for review. All users who have review privileges for the document will receive an email (Figure 8).

The document may be attached to the e-mail so you can read it right away. But documents can only be released through the system. Any revisions you make to the attachment will not be reflected in the controlled draft or released document unless you upload it to the system.  If you do that, it will cause another work flow cycle to occur on the document you have uploaded. To avoid proliferation of documents, we suggest using the attachment for reference only doing all your revisions while logged into the system.

Figure 8

In this example, the revision number is still 0.0.0.0 because the document review has not yet been accepted. Clicking on the ‘Accept Review’ button which is lit up in figure 7, will create a document revision.

If you ‘reject draft’ you get a message that prompts you to enter a reason (figure 9).

Figure 9

Approving and Rejecting Revisions

Ultimately, revisions can be released by clicking the ‘release revision’ button (figure 10). You will only be able to release the document if you have permission to do so, per the settings on the ‘People’ tab. Talk to the document author or system administrator to find out what permissions you have.

Figure 10

When you click ‘release’ you will be asked if you would like to send the document via  FTP to a server other than the Bizmanualz server (figure 11). Select ‘yes’ if you are pushing released documents to SharePoint or another local server other than Bimanualz. If you are not sure, ask your administrator or Bizmanualz.

Figure 11

When you release a document for the first time, the version number changes to 1.0.0.0, indicating that the first release of the document has been achieved (figure 12). Note that many reviews may have occurred before e the first release.

Figure 12

Unreleased documents cannot be seen by the general user population. They will only see what you released to your customized Bizmanualz web site or to your SharePoint or Intranet. Only users of the Bizmanualz On-line editing module can see the drafts.

So, what do you think? Are you ready for Bizmanualz document management software?

A reader recently asked if we could talk about writing a policies and procedures “style guide”. As a matter of fact, many style guides already exist, so why bother to come up with one of your own? Your situation isn’t so unique.

Bizmanualz provides a style guide with its policy and procedure manuals. (It’s in the ”Manual Preparation” section, under “Your Manual” and “Effective Communication”.) It doesn’t break any new ground, but reinforces what you see in other style guides (Elements of Style, Chicago Manual of Style, etc.).

Why does — or why should — anyone use a style guide? Well, we use them to establish and preserve a preferred style of writing and/or layout. We use style guides to ensure consistency. It’s more economical to establish a documentation style and stick with it than to use a different style for every document.

In addition, the right style can help establish and reinforce your brand, though we’re not concerned about the brand internally. The consistency we’re looking for internally is that of behavior.

Written procedures are meant to ensure that the business processes they describe are carried out the same way every time, no matter who’s carrying out the procedure, or where or when.

Will a style guide help with that? It won’t hurt, though it really only scratches the surface. You don’t give a procedure to a trainee, tell them to read the procedure (or watch the video) over the weekend, and begin the process “for real” on Monday, do you? If you do, do you think the document’s style matters all that much to the employee?

Of course not! You may have them read/view the procedure first, but you have to show them – in a real or simulated work environment — how the procedure is carried out, then have them carry out the procedure themselves, gradually ramping up their productivity with their confidence level.

Therefore, the ultimate style guide is the user. If you get consistent results from your employees once they’ve been adequately trained — and you’re key performance indicators will tell you if that’s the case — your style meets the most important requirement. You’re achieving the desired result.

That’s not to say, “Forget style guides.” By all means, use them. Just don’t get hung up on them.

Now it’s your turn. Thoughts?

Much has been made of procedure writing, both here at Bizmanualz and around the Internet, but very little is said about an equally important part of the design and development process — procedure review.

Many problems with procedures that crop up after they’ve been implemented are traceable to inadequate or no review. Let’s say a procedure as written describes an ideal process, performed under ideal conditions (i.e., real-world conditions aren’t taken into account). If this isn’t caught in a procedure review, the end product will meet requirements only through luck. Luck being notoriously unreliable, inconsistent, and uncontrollable, you’re clearly better off with a review.

Why do you review anything? To ensure the accuracy and completeness of whatever it is you’re reviewing and to make sure everyone has the same understanding of the policy, process, or situation. In short, to ensure effective communication, which will lead you to the desired outcome.

Effective communication is a big reason why the international quality standard, ISO 9001, mandates design and development reviews (clause 7.3.4).  If you don’t review, you risk missing any number of product requirements, both stated and unstated, and you risk losing customers.

Need another reason to review policies and procedures? No one is perfect and no process is perfect. No one will write the perfect procedure the first time, every time.

Furthermore, no one — NO ONE! — can multitask. Your technical writer wears several other hats, right? That person is bound to temporarily lose focus on the policy or procedure they’re writing when other projects and other managers are continually demanding that their stuff is mission critical, “…so drop everything and work on this.” (Now, where was I?)

We all agree, then, that policies and procedures have to be reviewed, right? So, how’s it done? Well, one method that works is based on speech evaluations as done by Toastmasters. For a Toastmaster, learning how to evaluate a speech - or a written document - is as critical as learning how to give a speech or write one.

Objectives

Always start with the objectives or requirements. Were they clearly communicated to the technical writer? Did he/she understand them? Do you? Were the objectives prioritized and categorized? Were they SMART objectives?

Review

Did the technical writer achieve the stated objectives/requirements? (Have a list of the objectives in front of you as you review the document.)

Also, list some important, yet unstated, objectives. For example, correct spelling and good grammar are often taken for granted. Don’t make that mistake. Make up a checklist for often overlooked items, like “Are important terms defined?” and “Is ‘active voice’ used?”

Did the tech writer go beyond the stated objectives? For example:

The procedure mentions a packaging machine that a first-time reader may not be familiar with. The tech writer includes a long shot (photo) of the machine and a closeup of the control panel. The pictures aren’t a requirement; furthermore, they (and additional photos) push the document beyond the stated requirement of “six pages, maximum”.

Which is the SMARTer objective, user understanding or document length?

Reward

In your review, whether its written or oral, be sure to lead with those aspects of the procedure where objectives were met or exceeded. If critical objectives were not, consider possible explanations for that (the writer’s level of experience, competing projects, the amount of information provided them, clarity of the objectives, etc.).

The point is not to let the writer “off the hook” (or to find a hook to hang them on). It’s about encouraging the writer - praising what they did well and asking them to do better. Tell them, “Here’s what you did well.”

Don’t be vague or insincere, either. Don’t fish for compliments — you’re not helping them by telling them that their capitalization was great, or they had all the commas in the right places.

Be truthful, be specific, and give them something to build on.

Respond

Tell the writer exactly what you see in the procedure (ex., will the reader know who’s supposed to do what, when, and why?) Restate the objectives and indicate which were met, which were exceeded, and which weren’t met. Use a numeric scale in your review (rarely is anything “black or white”).

Beyond that, does the procedure “flow”? Did they use the PDCA model correctly? Did she or he use words, voice, style, grammar, etc., effectively? Does the story - and the message - come across clearly?

Tell them what they did well and point out specific opportunities for improvement. Hand the document back to them with another objective: you need the revision back for a “final” review by a specific date.

Remember that policy and procedure review is an integral part of a design and development process. After you’ve reviewed the document, the writer will probably have to make some changes. After the writer has revised the document, review it again.

Don’t review it to death, however. Four or more reviews of the same document should tell you that the review process has broken down…somewhere. It might be time - at least temporarily - to bring in another pair of eyes.

As a reviewer, you’re obliged to:

• Be sure that stated and unstated objectives were met;
• Be fair;
• Be consistent;
• Be thorough; and
• Point out strengths and opportunities for improvement in the document and in the process.

And as one of my favorite sports announcers (Jack Buck) used to say after every broadcast, “Thanks for your time this time. ‘Til next time — so long.”

* * * * *

For more on evaluation, see “The Three R’s of Evaluating“, by David Hobson, DTM (”Toastmasters” magazine, Nov., 2007).

Simplifying procedures is a great way to save money and at the same time prepare for growth. By simplifying your procedures, you can cut waste with confidence that you are not cutting essential value-added services customers want to buy. Simplifying procedures prepares your company for growth because it streamlines your operations, documents them, and thus makes it much easier to replicate your operations at another location.

A new operation based on proven procedures is easier to manage because you can evaluate its performance against known metrics. And should the metrics indicate a need for adjustments-typical when rolling out a new location-staff will have procedures in place to affect needed changes. This significantly reduces the risk of opening a new location.

If you want to learn more about how you can save money and prepare for growth, check out our consulting pages. We can help you simplify procedures faster and more efficiently than you can do it yourself because we are continuously writing, publishing, deploying and updating policies and procedures. Our latest procedures represent lessons learned by our thousands of world-wide customers. Developed according to international ISO standards, Bizmanualz procedures move you further, faster. Save time. Why reinvent the wheel?

Check out our consulting pages. Or call me right now. Bizmanualz can help you save money and grow today. Contact: Dan Davison, Vice President Sales & Marketing, Bizmanualz, Inc. tel. (314) 863-5079 x23, Dan@Bizmanualz.com.

Among the top ten reasons that managers give for why their company’s policies and procedures don’t work is that “Employees don’t use them.” When procedures aren’t used, you may wonder why you bothered writing them. Did you waste your time? When procedures are written but not used, lessons that have been learned are forgotten. Mistakes that were corrected on paper long ago are made over and over again. Continuous improvement gives way to continuing problems and waste.

Waste costs money.  Yet, when organizations don’t follow their own core procedures, it’s hard for them to know what works and what doesn’t, so improvement evades them. They risk quality problems and customer disappointment. Customers may defect to competitors. Revenue may suffer.

When even core procedures are not used, you risk not complying with health, safety, and environmental regulations. That can endanger employees and gain unfavorable notice from auditors and regulators, further distracting you from using best practices and making continuous improvements.

Why aren’t your policies and procedures used?

When we hear employees say that procedures are getting in their way rather than helping, we usually find that procedures are too numerous, too long, poorly written, hard to follow, and/or hopelessly complex.  Writing and development problems are the chief reason that policies and procedures suffer such deficiencies. (See our web site for several articles explaining how to avoid and overcome procedure writing and development problems.)

How Bizmanualz Estimates Your Policies and Procedures Project

When companies come to Bizmanualz with poorly written policies and procedures, we typically recommend reducing and simplifying what they have today. Typically, we can cut from 30% to 60% of their documentation load, reducing the cost and complexity which at the same time lessens employees’ objections.

We can recommend an approach for your policies and procedures improvement project based on your answers to the following questions:

• How many procedures do you have today within the scope of the improvement project?
• Send us two or three sample procedures in MS WORD or PDF format. Let us know what format you want for the final procedures.
• What industry are you in?
• List the countries in which the procedures will be used. List each of the languages into which the procedures need to be translated (if any).
• Who is the lead regulator for your industry in each of the countries where the procedures will be used? Provide a link to the regulator’s web site and on-line regulations if available. List any other regulators that are likely to review or audit your procedures.
• Mention any quality standards that you are using or plan to use within 24 months.

Pictures and Graphics Help Bridge Cultural Gaps

If the procedures will be used in more than one country, we typically recommend replacing text with graphics, illustrations and pictures. Graphics are interpreted more consistently across cultures, which drives uniform interpretation and more consistent usage of procedures.

Page for page, graphics are more expensive to produce than written material. But a single graphic may eliminate a lot of pages of written material, mitigating the cost of development.  Most companies consider investment in graphics worth-while because:

• Procedures are used more consistently
• Compliance improves
• Injuries and work disruptions decrease.

Your Budget Considerations:

If Your Budget is Less than $10,000 US:

At budget levels less than $10,000 US, we would typically recommend training for your in-house procedure-writers on how to write more effective procedures. The training is similar to our Well-Defined Processes training, but emphasizes authoring procedures. After the training, your in-house team rather than Bizmanualz would apply the principles and update your procedures. Depending on the experience level of your procedure-writing team, more than one training event may be required.

If Your Budget is $10,000 to $30,000:

At budget levels above $10,000, Bizmanualz relieves your team from the production responsibilities, and provides the man-hours and expertise to update your procedures more quickly than most companies can train and do it on their own. At budget levels in this range, Bizmanualz:

• Evaluates the content and format of each of your existing procedures within the scope of the project
• Provides you with our written critique
• Provides a visual storyboard outlining the specific changes
• Drafts the procedures for your review
• Completes the graphics and reviews them with you
• Provides one revision to text and graphics, incorporates your comments
• Completes and delivers the procedures.

Projects above $30,000 are larger projects in scope; they might require deployment in more than one location, translation, optimization, or a lot of information graphics.

Larger projects may include procedure implementation of your procedures with your employees to make sure that they perceive value and use the procedures.  This may include additional buy-in training for your in-house procedures team on how to build and maintain support for your policies and procedures project.  You may need other communications tools such as job aids or videos that are not strictly considered procedures, but which nonetheless help workers apply the procedures consistently.   Process procedures optimization may require implementing lean, ISO or quality systems.

You can control the scope and budget of your project by:

• Controlling the number of procedures
• Working in phases, and reducing the scope of the current phase.
• Creating fewer language translations and limiting the number of geographies where the new procedures will be used.
• Using fewer graphics and more text.

If you would like Bizmanualz to estimate your policies and procedures project, please send us the information listed above under ‘How we Estimate Your Policies and Procedures Project.’ Don’t forget to send us samples of your current procedures. We will recommend an improvement approach that will increase compliance, safety and communication.

Contact: Dan Davison, Dan@bizmanualz.com, tel. (314) 863-5079 x23, Bizmanualz, Inc.