We always start our Well-Defined Processes Class by asking the participants “what’s wrong with your policies and procedures where you work?” and we always get the same answers.  Students come to the class from different industries, companies, and geographies and yet we still get the same answers every time.

People tell us how hard it is to keep their procedures up-to-date.  Information gets stale fast and it is difficult keeping procedures current and relevant without becoming outdated.  One reason for this is that the procedures are too long in the first place.  If you have a 35-page procedure then, yes, it is difficult to keep all 35 pages up-to-date.  Especially, if the procedure is unclear, overly complicated or just too difficult to understand in the first place.

Read more...   |    2 Comments »

Part 3 of a Three-Part Series

This month we are examining different process improvement programs on the market. Last week we discussed Lean Thinking and its application in mature industries, service businesses, or organizations that handle few transactions. This week we are going to look at throughput improvement or

Read more...   |    6 Comments »

Part 3 of a four-part series

Are you solving problems or improving the process?

In other words, if you find a problem in a process and implement change to fix it, then did you improve the process? Well, maybe… Sure, solving problems may be an important thing to do, but

Read more...   |    1 Comment »