I’ve noticed the topic of “sustainability” is piquing the interest of an awful lot of businesspeople of late. I believe it’s an issue worthy of serious consideration but I have a few questions before I proceed:

• How are we defining the term? Do we agree on what it means?
• Is there anyone on the inside (developing sustainability policies, setting sustainability objectives, implementing sustainability practices and procedures, etc.)?
• Are most of us aligned with the status quo (i.e., standing on the shore, waiting for some other fool or brave soul to test the water)?

There are plenty of references to sustainability floating around the web. In Quality, we continually refer to a practice known as the “5S’s”, the key “S” being “sustainability”. Sustainability is often linked with the construction business, LEED certification being the hottest topic in the industry. Our friends at ISO – the International Organization for Standardization – have issued a number of standards that directly or indirectly address the issue, such as:

• ISO 15932, “Sustainability in Building Construction – General Principles“;
• The ISO 15686 series on “Building and Construction Assets – Service Life Planning“; and
• ISO 14001, “Environmental Management Systems“.

I’m curious to know what all of you think, so I’ve started a poll on LinkedIn — look for “What’s the status of your organization’s ‘sustainability program’?”. For those of you who have a LinkedIn account, I hope to hear from you soon. (For those who don’t, it costs nothing to sign up.) I’ll post the results for you in the near future.

Thank you for your time, as always.

Steve

Unfortunately (for some of us), it’s that time of the year again. All over the USA and even outside the country, individuals (like me) are filing their Federal and state tax returns at the last possible moment. I’m sure a number of companies are bound up in the rush to beat tonight’s deadline, too (my friends who are CPAs are overwhelmed with work right now).

Not only is tax preparation exceedingly time consuming — it’s confusing and frustrating. You wish someone had all the answers, but even the “experts” don’t seem to.

Studies are conducted practically every year by governmental and private organizations that indicate the US Tax Code is virtually impossible to understand and enforce.  The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) web site has thousands of policies, procedures, guidelines, and forms. These documents apply to individuals, businesses, non-profits, and/or governmental entities.

The opportunity for error in preparing a tax return — whether you rely on a professional tax preparer, tax preparation software, or your own wits — is enormous.  The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has found over and over that those who are subject to the Tax Code, as well as those who are responsible for enforcing it, routinely make mistakes because they don’t understand the Code.

There’s a valuable lesson here for every business, no matter where you’re located or what business you’re in:

1. Review your policies and procedures regularly. The last major revision of the US Tax Code was in 1986; before that, it was 1954. 25 years (or more) is far too long between revisions.
2. Make sure your policies and procedures are clear and concise. Don’t make them so large and cumbersome that even your own people don’t understand them. Reduce complexity and you reduce the opportunity for error.
3. Cover the details but don’t obsess over them. Trying to address every possible circumstance — sometimes known as “paralysis by analysis” — generally causes much more trouble than it solves.
4. Train your personnel carefully and thoroughly. Retrain them regularly, too.
5. Get a variety of inputs. Involve the people who are using the policies and procedures — those who are subject to the rules and regulations — in the design phase, long before you start implementing any code.
6. Be sure your eyes and ears are always open. Be sure you don’t have a closed mind. Get feedback from the user in as many ways as you can. Encourage suggestions for improvement.
7. Keep adequate records at every stage. Be sure they’re organized, legible, and easily found when you need them and be sure to have a backup copy offsite.

Maybe you’re thinking, “I’ll never have to worry about that problem. I don’t plan on getting nearly that big.” Perhaps, but it’ll be easier if you plan well ahead of time rather than happen into a difficult situation because you didn’t plan, will it not?

Do you notice any of the IRS’s problems — long and unwieldy documents, lack of feedback, etc. — creeping into your own business?

REFERENCES

1. “10 Ways to Avoid a Tax Audit”, Wall St. Journal, 15 April 2011 (reproduced by Yahoo Finance) – http://finance.yahoo.com/taxes/article/111960/avoid-tax-audit-wsj
2. “How to Survive an IRS Audit”, Motley Fool, undated - http://www.fool.com/personal-finance/taxes/how-to-survive-an-irs-audit.aspx

Are you a “good” boss?  Google’s “Project Oxygen” has taken a lot of time — a couple of years, actually — to study what makes a good boss. Their “people analytics” staff has come up with eight key attributes of good managers within their organization.¹ Among those eight attributes are:

• Technical expertise (as you might expect of a tech firm like Google);
• Having a clear vision and strategy for “the team”;
• Helping your employees with career development;
• Be productive and results-oriented; and
• Be an effective and empathetic leader.

What shouldn’t surprise us is that of the eight attributes of a good manager, the “ability to work well with one’s employees” was ranked first in Google’s study. “Technical expertise”, which Google had considered an absolute necessity to being a team leader, was ranked at the bottom.

You may recall that in the Bizmanualz blog, we’ve talked about the qualities of great leaders and what makes true leaders different from others.   Mostly, what separates leaders from mere managers are those intangible qualities, those “quirks” of personality that stump psychologists and sociologists to this day.

What makes for a good manager and exactly how do we quantify it? Well, it’s been tried — a number of times — but Google is putting their own spin on the concept. Despite past failings elsewhere, the people at Google think it’s possible to make the process of grooming leaders a reliable, repeatable process. Their goal is to make the process of hiring and training leaders like any other human resources procedure.

This should be welcome news to every other HR department if Google’s HR can do it right. Managing people, with all their complexities and variations, is (at best) extremely difficult and statistical analysis is helpful only to a point. The chief problem with “data driven management” is that people can’t easily be reduced to a set of predictable behaviors and outcomes — we are only human. Every statistic has to be taken with a grain of salt² but even more so when human behavior is the focus.

I’m going to follow Google’s Project Oxygen to see if there’s any merit to it. I sincerely hope so but I don’t harbor lofty expectations, either. Google may have a world of resources behind them but — people being people – it’s not a sure bet that Project Oxygen will deliver the goods.

So, what do you think? Can Google be successful — at something not so technical — when many other companies before them haven’t been?

NOTES

¹Bryant, Adam, “Google’s Quest to Build a Better Boss”, New York Times, 12 March 2011 — http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/13/business/13hire.html.

²Seife, Charles, Proofiness: The Dark Arts of Mathematical Deception, Viking Press (23 Sept 2010). ISBN-13 #978-0670022-16-8.

During the “beta test” phase of developing our OnPolicy™ document management software, our beta testers have been coming up with great questions, some of which we thought we’d share with you in advance of our formal launch. For example:

1. What document formats are supported by OnPolicy™?

The OpenSource code behind OnPolicy will support many common document formats, such as:

• Microsoft Word (“.doc”, “.docx”);
• MS-Excel (“.xls”, “.xlsx”);
• Adobe Reader (“.pdf”); and
• Some limited-format and unformatted file types (“.rtf”, “.txt”).

2. Why are all of our documents converted to “.pdf” files?

In OnPolicy™, released documents are converted from their native formats to “.pdf” to lessen the likelihood that document “Readers” — personnel assigned read-only access to documents — can modify your documents.

3. Where are our documents stored?

All documents are stored in a “SAS 70 Type II Certified” data center, which is also one of the largest colocation facilities in the central United States.

4. How do we know we’re the only ones who have access to our company’s documents?

We’re using all available means to reasonably secure your data, including:

• Dedicated servers;
• Encryption;
• Firewalls;
• Periodic backups; and
• Password protection.

5. Can I set different access levels for different users?

OnPolicy™ Administrators can create users and assign them roles (e.g., Reader, Editor). Roles define responsibilities and accessibility of documentation and features.

6. Can documents be deleted?

• You can upload, download, and delete documents from your account at any time. Your documents are also backed up regularly.  But, as per document control, released documents can only be deleted after their retention date.

7. Can documents be recovered?

• Deleted documents are retrievable for an agreed-on period of time for as long as your OnPolicy™ account remains active.
• Note that recovery time depends, in part, on the number and size of files to be recovered.

If you have other questions about OnPolicy™ software-as-a-service document management, please:

• Visit our OnPolicy™ website, http://www.onpolicy.com;
• Call us (314-863-5079);
• Send us an email; or
• Visit the Bizmanualz web site, http://www.bizmanualz.com.

We’re happy to be of service.

Articles on winning and keeping customers abound on the Internet. They generally focus on achieving and maintaining “customer service excellence“. They talk a lot about tactics but miss the strategic aspects of customer satisfaction and retention.

What drives your customer service (aka, customer relationships), anyway? Your company policy, of course. Your mission and vision drive your overall company policy, in which you lay out your overall objectives that guide your strategic plan. From there come your sales and marketing plans, your operational plans, and so forth. You might think of your policy as a juncture of internal and external forces.

So, why do I bring up this subject? An article appeared last week on “Mashable” that makes a very good point about the importance of a strong, well-written company policy to your customer relationships.  This article explains why no one reads privacy policies, and they cite Facebook and others as examples.

Why don’t customers read privacy policies? The article has several answers, including:

• The longest privacy policy of the “top 1,000″ websites takes 45 minutes to read at 244 wpm⁽¹⁾; and
• The average of the privacy policies cited takes about 10 minutes to read.

It’s not just privacy policies, of course — it’s every kind of policy. They’re lengthy, full of confusing verbiage, and put off their audience. They do neither the company nor its customers any good. So, why are wordy, obtuse policies (in “nanofonts”) foisted on customers?

• In the modern business environment, legal departments owe their employers a duty to protect them. Unfortunately, this is often interpreted to mean “let’s cover every contingency we can think of”. Clarity is invariably sacrificed for thorough attention to detail.
• Modern culture seems to have promoted discord, vitriol, and revenge over cooperation, conciliation, and harmony. I don’t know where this warrior mentality worked its way into business but being humble and nice is now a sign of weakness. This line of thinking leads companies to draw in and protect rather than be exposed to danger.
• Companies seem to prefer “customer acquisition” over “cultivating relationships”. They need (or they prefer) the quick payoff rather than the slow-and-sure.

What’s most puzzling is that the last issue persists even though the need for short-term profits is what largely brought about the current global economic recession. When will we learn?

If a company had as one of its stated purposes “to reduce customer goodwill and retention”, they still couldn’t do a better job of driving people to look for alternatives than by writing bad policy. Badly conceived, poorly written company policy is avoidable; well-written policy is a necessity.

“So, what is a well-written policy?”, you ask. It’s a policy that’s:

• Clear;
• Concise;
• Direct;
• Easy to comprehend;
• Not written to its audience but written with that audience foremost in mind; and
• Written with SMART objectives behind it.

What’s your company policy? Does everyone understand it? Does it help your customer relationships? Call or write and let’s talk policy.

As always, thank you for your time.

* * * * * * *

⁽¹⁾Font type and size have something to do with that figure, as do the complex wording and convoluted syntax common to “legalese”. Naturally, we read faster and retain more of some documents than others (Novels v. Contracts, for example). I recommend checking out these sites and others for more information on reading speed:

• TurboRead - http://www.turboread.com/interpretation.htm.
• Speed Reading Center - http://www.speedreadingcenter.com/average-reading-speed/.
• Free Speed Reading - http://www.free-speed-reading.com/articles/what-is-the-average-reading-speed-of-americans.

In October, 2009, we discontinued shipment of the 3-ring-bound version of our policy and procedure manuals. It was a relatively easy decision, as more and more of our customers chose the downloadable version of our manuals over the binder. They were pleased to save on shipping and material costs. It also helped that we simplified the download process, thanks to invaluable customer feedback.

Prior to October, we began publishing most of our policies and procedures manuals in hardbound form, similar to a textbook, and made them available for sale through online retailers. So when we started receiving enquiries about “hard copy” versions of our manuals in recent weeks, we decided to offer the hardbound procedures books as add-ons.

You can now buy (for an additional $100 per) a hardbound procedure book as an add-on to nine of our policies and procedures manuals and the popular management  procedures bundles. The content of each hardbound book is identical to the MS-Word manual you download when you purchase it in electronic form.

To buy the hardbound books, simply choose the appropriate option (Download Only vs. Download + Hard Cover Book) when you place the product in your shopping cart.

Our goal is to ensure your satisfaction by providing the delivery option you desire. We won’t be selling the hardbound books as stand-alone products on our website, but they will continue to be available from online retailers like Amazon.com.

We were asked this by a reader not long ago, in reference to writing a quality procedure. Exactly what procedure, the reader didn’t say, so I’ll keep my explanation brief and general.

In the policies and procedures we offer on the Bizmanualz web site, we generally include a statement of purpose. That is, what’s the purpose of the procedure outlined in the document? Not only is what you do important — why you do it is just as important.

Again, why am I doing this?

Overall, the purpose of any procedure is to serve as training material. In addition, an important purpose of procedures is to ensure consistency. Procedures are designed to help reduce variation within a given process.

Furthermore, clearly stating the purpose for a procedure helps you gain employee cooperation, or compliance, and it instills in your employees a sense of direction and urgency.

The statement of purpose is a “soft” statement of reasons and goals. Objectives, on the other hand, are about quantifying and measuring. For any of your business processes, you must have measurable objectives. How do you know if your processes are working if you’re not tracking and measuring the results? How do you improve your processes if you don’t establish a baseline, then measure output against the baseline? And, how do you compete effectively if you’re not continually improving?

In short, a procedure’s purpose addresses the “why” and the objectives address “what”, “when”, “how”, and “how much”. The purpose is general, where the objectives are specific.

I hope that helps clarify the issue. If it doesn’t — or if you have a differing opinion — let me know, won’t you? Thanks.

What are procedures? Procedures are documents that describe business processes. Procedures are one tool we can use to train new and current employees how our processes work, and sometimes we show them how processes interact. Procedures can also help ensure a high degree of consistency in how processes operate and in the results they yield.

From "We Want Our Mummy", Columbia Pictures (1938)

Procedures are also a pain for many companies to write and maintain. Many organizations write procedures with one goal in mind — compliance. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Either there’s a compelling business reason for you to comply, like a larger organization that says they won’t do business with you unless you comply with a certain standard, such as ISO 9001. Or, there are laws with which you have to comply simply to stay in business (for instance, worker safety and food safety regulations).

Strangely, when compliance is the most important — or the only — goal, companies often forget about their procedures once they’ve implement them. Instead of monitoring and measuring, reviewing, and adjusting their performance — gradually and continually improving the process — they put the Almighty Book of Policies and Procedures in a hallowed place on the shelf and ignore it.

From "vodex.co.uk" site

Why is that? Well, here’s what some companies say about procedures:

• “Writing procedures isn’t our business”
• “It’s a cost center, not a moneymaker”
• “It takes time and money to maintain procedures”

Writing Procedures Isn’t Our Business

It’s true — your customers aren’t buying your internal procedures. What ARE they buying? Yes, they’re purchasing a product…but is it just the product or service they’re buying? Of course not.

Besides paying for goods or services, your customers are paying for the quality of your product, your ability to produce a consistently good product, and/or your ability to act on problems quickly and efficiently. They like the fact that you don’t make excuses — you just fix problems. And how do you do that without implementing effective policies and procedures, like “how to conduct an internal audit” or “how to take corrective action“? You might, if you’re lucky, but luck doesn’t guarantee your customers consistently high-quality results.

Procedure Writing Is a Cost Center

True, it costs you time and money to develop, implement, and maintain procedures. The fact that you have to research, write, review, and approve procedures can appear expensive and time consuming.

But what does it cost you NOT to have procedures? Like we said earlier, effective internal procedures are what help you gain and keep customers. Without the high quality and consistency that procedures help ensure, you risk losing your hard-earned reputation — and your hard-won customers. It’s much easier to keep a satisfied customer than it is to obtain a new one and it’s infinitely easier to keep them than it is to win them back once you’ve disappointed them.

It Takes Time and Money to Maintain Procedures

“Besides”, many companies insist, “our people know what they have to do. They don’t need procedures once they have the proper experience ‘under their belts’.” But how did your employees get that knowledge in the first place? Were they given in-depth training? Was the training consistent? Are they able to build on that knowledge?

Besides, business circumstances change (look at the recession we still seem to be going through). Customers’ needs change over time. Regulations are added all the time — some don’t affect you but others have a great impact on your business. Are you accounting for these types of change in your procedures?

In short, maintaining your procedures will cost you something but not maintaining them will cost your company a great deal more. You run the risk of falling behind your competition, falling to the back end of the technology curve, or falling out of compliance if you’re not looking at your procedures as “living documents”. If you’re not continually looking to improve the way you do things, you run the risk of stunting your company’s growth.

To sum up, you really should develop, implement, and maintain business procedures because it’s just plain good business and not just because somebody’s making you.

What do you think? Can an organization’s growth be held back because of poor or nonexistent procedures?

* * * * * * *

If you find your company is having trouble developing effective, meaningful procedures, check out our full line of business policies and procedures. They’ll make your policies-and-procedures journey easier to start and make it easier for you to stay on the right path.

If you’re naturally risk averse, you probably don’t think this is the best time to consider starting a business. The normal risks you’ll face seem amplified by the currently unsteady economy. On the other hand, if you’re a risk taker, you might think this is a great time to get going, taking advantage of the fact that everyone else is so reluctant to commit themselves.

There are many ways we can deal with business risk. We’re all familiar with the four classical risk management categories:

• Avoidance;
• Mitigation, or reduction;
• Transference; and
• Acceptance.

For example, I don’t gamble often and when I do, I tend to have a minuscule stake in the outcome. I avoid the risk, for the most part. On the rare occasion when I “throw” money at one of the multi-state lotteries, I throw away a dollar or two. I’m mitigating my risk by betting a couple of bucks (at most), because I accept the truism that “the house always wins”.

Here’s another example — insurance for our businesses, as well as our health, homes, and so on. We’re well aware of the fact that we can’t possibly prevent every natural disaster or workplace accident, so we pay insurance premiums to transfer a portion of the risk to the insuror.

Still another example: purchasing and using safety equipment, combined with regular safety training, will significantly mitigate (or reduce) some of the risk of running your business.

Another way to reduce risk? Our business policies and procedures, collectively speaking, are a highly effective risk management tool. Clear, well-written policies and procedures, combined with effective employee training programs, have proven to be among the most effective risk management solutions you can implement.

Of course, if you need help developing effective policies and procedures, you can count on Bizmanualz to deliver. Check out our extensive library of policies and procedures at http://www.bizmanualz.com and let us know how we can be of service.

* * * * * * *

So, what are the two or three greatest risks your business is facing today?

What message are you trying to get across in your procedures? To whom? Is your message getting through? How do you know?

“What message am I supposed to get across, besides ‘This is how you’re supposed to do it’?”, you may ask. To that I reply (in the form of a question), “Are we talking ‘procedures‘? Or ‘work instructions‘?”

If the activity is fairly simple:

• There might be more than one way to do it, but none of them is longer than 6-7 steps;
• It doesn’t require a lot of parts, tools, or prep time; and/or
• It’s not being done by a broad, diverse group of people;

we’re talking about work instructions. An example is “loading a smartphone app”:

• Use a search engine to find an app that does what you want;
• Go to a web site that has the app; and
• Download the app and install it on your smartphone.

Many tasks are simple and straightforward so that an employee can be trained in minutes just by showing them how it’s done and letting them do the task repeatedly until they have it right. You don’t need to write a work instruction (or a procedure) when:

• It would take less time to show someone than to write and test a work instruction; and/or
• The risk of failure is minimal (i.e., the probability of failure is small-to-nonexistent, as is its impact).

If you can’t afford the risk, either don’t do it or reduce your risk by documenting the process.

Which brings us to procedures. Procedures are documented processes. The processes may be so complex that they can’t be reduced to a set of work instructions. A process may also consist of a number of processes. The process may cross departmental and/or hierarchical boundaries.

In all cases, it’s important to communicate certain concepts clearly and effectively in your procedures, such as:

• Purpose;
• Roles and responsibilities;
• Scope; and
• The company’s policy on that subject.

If you’re not communicating these points to your intended audience — if your message is being lost in translation — here are some things you can do to help:

1. Add graphical content. If I tell you, “Enter your user name and password and hit [Login]“, you probably know what that means, regardless of what application I’m talking about. But, what if you don’t?

Procedures are primarily designed to train (and retrain) people to perform complex processes and/or processes they don’t perform often. If you’re unfamiliar with logging in, it’d be helpful to you if I showed you what that looks like, wouldn’t it?

(Don’t you love the warmth of that light bulb that goes “on” in your head as you say, “A-ha!”?)

2. Use active voice. It’s more direct. It leaves less room for interpretation. For example, which of the following makes more sense:

• “An internal audit program shall be prepared annually by the lead Quality Auditor before the end of the current calendar year”?, or
• “The lead Quality Auditor shall prepare next year’s interal audit program before the end of the current calendar year”?

3. Write as if you’re talking to one person. Picture yourself trying to teach a procedure to someone who’s not at all familiar with it or the company, like a new hire.

That’s the procedure’s audience and that’s how you should write all procedures — as if it’s just you and the trainee at the computer, machine, etc.

4. Tell your audience “why”. The new hire in #3, above, should have been through a general company orientation — the company’s lines of business, how long it’s been in business, the vision and mission statements, company objectives, etc. — by now. They need all that background to understand how this procedure fits into the grand scheme (that is, how the process helps the company achieve its objectives, or “why they’re learning the procedure”).

If you don’t tell them why, they’re liable to ask themselves at some point, “Why am I doing this?” You may not agree with — or like — the answers they come up with on their own. This may be counterproductive.

5. Simplify, simplify, and simplify. My favorite example is the Swiss Army knife¹. The more expensive variations have nearly every tool you might possibly need. Capable of doing a hundred things, it does none of them well. I’ll take a tool box with me on a camping trip; you bring your Swiss Army knife.

Champ 28 Swiss army knife, by Wenger

Is my kit heavier? Yes! Is it stowable in the glove box?² No! But will your saw cut anything larger or heavier than string cheese? Will your knife cut nylon rope? Will your hammer…wait…you don’t have one. (I will credit you the beer and wine bottle openers, however.)

My point is you should keep your procedures like your tools — simple, functional, and easy to use.

Remember these five techniques for improving your procedures:

1. Add graphical content;
2. Use active voice;
3. Write like you’re talking to an audience of one;
4. Tell the reader “why”; and
5. Keep it simple

…and your procedures will be simple and easy to use, which will improve your workforce’s productivity and morale. So, who’s with me?

* * * * * * *

Notes:

¹I’m expressing a personal preference; that’s all. (I can’t see “Dexter” using a Swiss army knife, can you?) However, if Wenger wants to give me a Swiss army knife and show me how to use it, I’m open to that.

²I’m curious: How long have you been driving? Have you ever, in that time, put a pair of gloves in the “glove box” of any auto?