A process map is a flow diagram of the primary processes within an organization. It very specifically shows you both who and what is involved in a process.  Process maps visually describe the flow of activities of a process and are not limited to a single business department or function.

Process mapping is about communicating your process to others so that you achieve your management objectives.  You can build stronger communication and understanding with process maps.

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A “procedure” is a term used in a variety of industries to define a series of steps, taken together, to achieve a desired result.  Procedures explain how to accomplish a task.  A procedure is sometimes called a work instruction.  If you are preparing an ISO 9001 quality management system then the term procedure is used to describe a process, whereas a work instruction is used to describe something more basic like a specific step in a process.  For example, how to fill out a form.  Procedures are known in other ways too.

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Writing company policy is similar to writing a business procedure, but there are a few differences between a policy and a procedure.  Business policies consist of either company rules, typically about ethics or relationships, or process outcomes defining expected results, kind of like a mission statement.

Company rules are found in your Employee Handbook.  One example would be sexual harassment.  It is illegal in the United States to subject others to unwelcome sexual conduct in a work situation.  If you are going to write a company policy, you would start with the law or regulation issued by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).  The EEOC provides definitions and additional information that will allow us to describe a company policy.

Every company should have a sexual harassment policy in their company manual that reads something like this:

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In the first part of this article, we discussed Workplace Change and the Speed of Information. In part two, we complete our discussion with a look at information technology’s effect on Social Systems, Skills Displacement, and the Dynamics of Information Technology.

Social Systems

Questions in the information age have been surfacing, causing rifts in the social system of the organization. Changes in thought are occurring as part of the cultural transformation. Work groups are forming as workers move away from linear processing (assembly lines) and toward other models and dynamics, yet we are glued to the computer more. Social interaction as our parents and grandparents knew it is on the decline. Organizations will be forced to adopt changes in order to survive in the fast-paced information age.

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You’ve written a new procedure.  Your procedure review identified completeness, correctness, and subject matter applicability.  You feel you’ve caught your procedure writing errors and the procedure’s ready to go…but go where?  How do you determine if your new procedure is working?

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Business and organizational development is about business process change: not as in “process change – the event”, but “process change – the journey“.  Your business processes change in response to market forces, competition, regulations, customer demand, the economy, culture, personal beliefs, and many other factors.  The question isn’t about what is causing the business process changes — we know your business processes are going to change — the question is…

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Last week we identified the most common process maturity level in many organizations, phase one — Reactive.  Few organizations are able to advance much farther up in management system maturity.  This week we will look at the next two levels in our process maturity model that describe the phases in which an effective management system comes to life.  The Documentation and Stability Phases.

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According to comments we receive from attendees at the conclusion of our two day Well-Defined Processes course, one of the more enjoyable aspects of the course (besides the excellent instruction and great materials!) is the interaction that typically takes place between participants.

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Our mission at Bizmanualz is to help other businesses succeed. Our product line of policies and procedures manuals, business process training, and business consulting are all geared toward helping organizations realize their vision and mission, and then implementing these over-arching principles operationally through alignment and control of internal processes in order to achieve continual improvement and reach important goals.

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In the previous series of articles, we discussed applying Statistical Process Control (SPC) to business processes. Although SPC has been around for a long time and is applicable to the current world of Lean, Six Sigma, and ISO, it is often overlooked.

SPC is a great tool to not only monitor the current and recent behavior of a process, but is also a great tool to support Continuous Improvement activities.

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