Last April 17, I read the news on the Internet, as I do every day, and saw a report that an Indian firm, Godrej & Boyce, produced the last typewriter and was shutting down its Mumbai factory. The story seemed plausible to me — I haven’t used my Brother daisy-wheel electric in eons and I can’t tell you the last time I’ve seen anyone use a typewriter to dash off an angry letter to the editor, let alone get their daily work done.

A little more than a week later, it was announced that these “RIP, typewriter” stories were all wrong. There are still companies manufacturing those old-fashioned mechanical marvels and if you want one — seriously! — new and used typewriters are fairly easy to come by.

Many people who grew up entirely in the Internet era are waxing rhapsodic about “the satisfying ‘clickety-clack’ sound of the keys” and ”getting in touch with the basic creative process, like it was back in the days of Faulkner, Hemingway, and Kerouac”.

“It all comes back to the basics.“
Dave Thomas, “Wendy’s” founder (1932-2002)

Well, before I dismissed these people as daydreamers, I had to think about how we communicated in the pre-word-processor, pre-smartphone era. True, the typewriter was not encouraging or forgiving but it made you plan…carefully. It made you pay attention to details.

Documents in those times (portrayed so effectively in movies like “The Front Page” and TV shows like “Mad Men”) were thoroughly edited and revised before being released. Calling back hundreds of design documents or proposals — or hundreds of thousands of newspapers — simply wasn’t practical. And once word got around that you were careless or sloppy or didn’t get the facts straight, your reputation was ruined.

“This is Bensinger. Give me a ‘rewrite man’.“
The Front Page (1974)

In the 21st century, business documents, news stories, blog posts, tweets, etc., are generated at alarming speeds. In fact, the speed of communication has become the main driver of communication; the message itself is often an afterthought. Thoroughness, accuracy, and attention to detail — in short, the quality of communication — have suffered significantly.

This may not mean much to the casual tweeter or blogger but to business, reduced quality of communication can be toxic. Deadlines are important – second-place finishers don’t usually get championship rings — but so is quality. First-place finishers can have their trophies taken away.

So, as a business leader — think about your policy, procedure, email, or other document you’re about to issue. Isn’t it worth the extra few minutes to get it done right?

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OnPolicy is a new document management system from Bizmanualz, designed to help ensure high-quality communication by automating the document review-and-approval process, organizing your policies and procedures, making them readily available when and where they’re needed, and ensuring periodic reviews of all your documents. See the OnPolicy website or email us (info@onpolicy.com) for more information.

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RECOMMENDED READING

1. Jacob, Shine, “Typewriters About to Become a Page in History”, Business Standard, 17 April 2011 – http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/typewriters-about-to-becomepage-in-history/432497/.
2. McCracken, Harry, “Rumors of the Typewriter’s Death: Greatly Exaggerated”, Technologizer.com, 26 April 2011 - http://technologizer.com/2011/04/26/typewriters-not-dead/.

I wonder how many of our clients, on receiving our policy-and-procedure manuals, have asked themselves what in heck they got themselves into. (“There’s a lot of stuff here…where do I begin?”) Well, like a lot of things, it’s probably not as difficult as it looks initially. First, you took a step in the right direction by using our templates to develop your company policies and procedures. It’s always easier to start with some of the work already done for you, rather than you having to start from scratch.

Now, how do you proceed?

Understand Why You Need Policies and Procedures

You don’t need policies and procedures merely to comply with regulations or industry standards (like ISO 9001). Sure, there’s nothing quite like the threat of fines, legal action, and the scorn of the business community to motivate you, but that’s far from the best reason. Much better reasons for developing policies and procedures include:

• Communicating your business goals and priorities;
• Standardizing processes, behavior, and results;
• Training your employees consistently; and
• Identifying acceptable and unacceptable behaviors (and encouraging or discouraging them).

Prioritize Your Needs and Set Goals and Timelines

Now that you understand “why”, you need to decide “what”.  Of the policies and procedures you could work on, you have to determine which one(s) are going to provide:

• The biggest bang for the buck;
• A quick return on your investment; and/or
• The greatest good for the greatest number.

Only you know what you need.  I can offer you suggestions (like “start with a fairly simple process”) but only you have the intimate, day-to-day knowledge of your organization. It’s your company: you decide.

So, decide which process you’re going to document first.  If you have absolutely no idea (you have no metrics and no historical basis for evaluation), try any Bizmanualz policy or procedure.  Document your initial design and development process and use it as a baseline for further development.

Give the first procedure a fair evaluation.  Don’t look at your first policy-and-procedure development, point out all the flaws you can find, declare the project an abject failure, and pull the plug.

Introduce discipline into the development process by setting clear and meaningful (aka, “SMART“) goals and timelines.

Analyze Your Existing Procedure

If you already have a de facto¹ procedure in place, don’t throw it out in favor of so-called best practices that may or may not work for your firm.

“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” (Anon.)

Now is as good a time as any to document your process.  Diagram it quickly in any manner and medium with which you’re comfortable. Simple is best (“Don’t make a big production out of it!”, Mom used to say).  Next…

Compare Your Process with Bizmanualz Best Practices

Bizmanualz has already looked at many companies’ procedures, blended them together to describe “best practices”, and reasonably modeled these procedures on the Deming, or “Plan-Do-Check-Act”, cycle. You may find that your procedure already looks very much like the PDCA model:

• You develop a set of objectives and a plan (process) for realizing those objectives;
• You implement the plan and immediately start collecting process data (in-process, end-of-process, etc.);
• You routinely analyze the data, to see if the process is performing in line with expectations; and
• You make changes to the process (procedure) in order to improve it and improve your results.

If that’s the case, you don’t have far to go at all. Next…

Make Our Procedure Your Procedure

Make the obvious and necessary changes to the Bizmanualz policy and/or procedure.  We wrote them generally, like ISO standards, so they’d have the widest possible application.  Any resemblance between our procedure and your process is coincidental; that is, you’ll have to customize our procedures – make them your procedures.  For example:

• Change every instance of “Bizmanualz” or “the company” to your company;
• Where you have an existing form (e.g., purchase order, customer order, invoice), use it – and make sure field names, etc., on the form and in the procedure agree;
• Change job titles in the “Responsibilities” section and in the procedure itself to reflect your circumstances;
• Change diagrams² as needed;
• Add visual aids – they add impact and meaning and they complement verbal descriptions very well (especially when they come from your office, your shop floor, your staff, etc.); and
• Leave out what you don’t need.  An entire procedure or just part of one — if it doesn’t apply to your situation, delete it.  Make your policies and procedures simple and direct.

Verify and Validate the Procedure

The people responsible for implementing the procedure have to put it to the test.  Oh, you could write a procedure and thrust it on an unsuspecting workforce but until it’s subjected to “real world” conditions, the results you see may not be the ones you want or expect.

And there’s more to it than procedure verification and validation. Some people call it “getting buy-in”. Whatever you call it, recognize that your employees are stakeholders in the company. They have a vested interest in the company, too – if it does well, they do well. So, keep them in the loop on matters that directly affect them, to ensure their understanding and cooperation.

Even if they’re not directly impacted by the procedure in question, keep all employees informed of this — and most — company matters.

Implement the Procedure

Now, publish the tested-and-verified procedure.  Distribute the procedure to those responsible for executing it, analyzing it, and training employees.  NOTE: A document management system, or DMS, will help you address publication and distribution, as well as improve document control.

Hold a training session on the procedure – make sure trainees are not only capable of doing the work, but that they understand the process and the objectives, as well.  Finally, execute the process.  Collect the data from measuring devices and routinely analyze it.  Look for anomalies and trends in the data, evaluate the process, and aim for continual improvement.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, it’s just that simple! Any questions?

NOTES

¹Just because you haven’t documented it doesn’t mean you don’t have an effective process in place.  Example: my wife and I came to a quick understanding some time ago that I would clean tubs, showers, and toilets and balance the checkbook. It’s very effective, plus there’s no point in documenting such processes because (a) they’re easy and (b) she won’t ever do them.

²We’ve been using Microsoft Visio to build diagrams. Unfortunately, Visio is not automatically included with any version of MS-Office, so far as we know. There are many alternatives to Visio, though – any search engine will help you find them – so your organization need not be constrained by a lack of Visio³.

³No, that’s not a typo.

I recently posed this question to the “Bizmanualz Policies Procedures Network“, or group, on LinkedIn:

“The same teams (Brasil, Italia, España, Deutschland, etc.) are perennially among the top contenders for the FIFA World Cup. Do you think it’s the personnel or the system that makes these teams consistently great?”

I’d like to know what you think, and why. To me, it’s sort of a “Heredity or environment?” question: it isn’t one or the other. I mean, you could have one or the other and you might do well. However, if you have both good personnel and a good system that optimizes their individual skills and experience and blends them…

Look at some of the great individual performers of all time, in team sports – Pelé, Michael Jordan, Wayne Gretzky, and Babe Ruth. As capable as they were, they didn’t reach the zenith of their respective sports until they were surrounded by other capable people and learned to work as a team, using a system. (I wish I could have John Facenda narrate those last two sentences.)

Strangely, we forget how much their coaches — and the systems they designed and implemented — had to do with their successes. Feola, Jackson, Sather, and Huggins — all devised systems that ensured quality and consistency. Management also scouted well and hired not just talented and hard-working player personnel, but those who understood the “team concept” and put the team ahead of individual accomplishments.

The same is true in business, of course. Some of your employees are undoubtedly star performers but until they have a system that coordinates — meshes – their actions with those of other capable people, and until everyone buys into the concept of “team first”, they’re never going to reach their potential. And as a result, neither will your company.

You have to have a management system that fosters quality, consistency, and ongoing improvement to the system and the people using it. And, you have to have the right players.

By the way, I may as well get a plug in for our LinkedIn policies and procedures group. We’re at http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=86367. If you’re not part of our group, or if you haven’t joined LinkedIn yet, consider this your invitation to join us.

I look forward to your comments — here, by email, and on LinkedIn. I’m especially excited when you challenge my “knowledge” or my way of thinking. (Or as they say in my favorite sport, ice hockey, “You wanna go?”)

Let’s get it on!

What would you say if I told you that by saving time and paper, you can save a bundle of money, too?  Well, that’s exactly what Bizmanualz is offering in the month of April.

Last week, we launched the “Bizmanualz Green Initiative” to encourage you to download our products and save paper and fuel. (Did you know there’s about a ream of paper in each of our printed products? That’s close to six pounds!) By downloading your policies and procedures documents, you save time.  And during April, downloading saves you money, because we’re discounting all download-only policy and procedure manuals. Now that’s a real win-win situation!

Here’s how the Bizmanualz Green Initiative works: We are offering $100 off any procedures manual you purchase as “download only”. Given that our average manual is over 500 pages long, we’re talking about saving a significant amount of paper! And, since we don’t incur material, processing, and shipping costs when you download, we’ll pass along the savings to you, our customer!

What does this mean? You save on every manual you purchase! In other words, save a bundle when you buy a bundle!

When you purchase the 9-manual CEO Company Procedures Series, you’ll instantly save $900 off an already heavily discounted price. Similarly, when you buy the 5-manual CFO Accounting Procedures Series, you save an additional $500. Even if you’re not ready to buy one of the Procedure Series, you still save $100 for each “download-only” individual procedures manual that you purchase.

If you’re thinking about starting your policies and procedures project, this is the best time to do it! The Bizmanualz Green Initiative runs during the month of April only! The incredible savings won’t last long!

Thoroughly researched, complete, and easily editable policies and procedures from Bizmanualz save you countless hours of research and writing time. Why start from scratch when you can get expertly assembled content at your fingertips within minutes?

Like to see what’s in our manuals? Download a free sample. If you have any questions, we’re here to help. Simply call (USA toll free, 1-800-466-9953; outside the USA, 314-863-5079) or contact us online.

Hurry! Buy your policies and procedures manuals from Bizmanualz today!

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.”

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