Strategy Over Process
The Case for Processes
Much of our work with our clients involves process development and process implementation around operating every facet of their business. The benefits of using well-documented and thoroughly trained processes are hard to overstate. In addition to creating more consistently positive results when processes are uniformly adopted, there's also a significant increase in the velocity of new hire productivity. When a new hire is handed a comprehensive playbook for their role, trained on that playbook, and the company has accountability in place to ensure people run plays from the playbook, new hires tend to succeed quickly. This also reduces reliance on a small number of veteran employees and removes barriers to growth. Exciting stuff.
Documenting, training, and implementing a supervisory structure for processes in every department is extremely worthwhile and should be among your first priorities for business improvement if you do not have them today.
Process = Good / Rigidity = Bad
That said, don't make the mistake of completely swapping out a culture of individual decision-making and situational flexibility with a new culture of rigidity and compliance. When the situation calls for it, deviations aren't just acceptable, they are necessary and preferred.
For example, we often implement a structured go/no-go criterion with our consulting clients to help with the constant and often challenging decisions about which projects to invest their extremely valuable and limited preconstruction resources on. This process, which must be completely customized to their unique businesses and regularly reviewed and updated to reflect current and future business conditions, helps contractors spend time on the healthiest opportunities for their businesses. The process also saves time by skipping projects that don't fit and using that time for more comprehensive preconstruction efforts on target projects.
The result is almost always higher capture rates on project pursuits and better margins at the time of sale. Once this process is in place, it should be used consistently to provide a dispassionate, objective scorecard for the project you are invited to pursue. This project pursuit scorecard helps companies with their decision-making. Notice that I did not say the process makes the decision for them.
It should be up to the judgment of the smart, experienced people in the business to determine whether they will or will not pursue a given project. Therefore, when the scorecard says that a project is a poor fit and that the company should pass on it, that negative scorecard should be considered an extremely valid data point and should weigh heavily on the decision to pursue it or not. However, I still encourage companies to make what they believe is the right judgment for their company on each project regardless of the scorecard output.
Imagine a situation in which a project failed to meet criteria for pursuit based on the scorecard, but this project was the first opportunity to pursue a project with a high value target client. The project is slightly too small to be considered a target job, the competitive circumstances are less than ideal, and the project is not in our perfect geographic footprint. When the theoretical CEO of this company calls me to ask if he should listen to his judgment which tells him to bid the job or listen to his process which tells him not to bid the job I respond by saying it sounds like you have compelling strategic reasons to deviate from your process on this one...go for it!
Strategy outweighs process every single time.
Value in Deviations
Deviations from your established processes have value. Whether you have strategic business reasons for a deviation, or you merely wish to experiment with another approach, there's absolutely nothing wrong with knowingly deviating from the process. To protect the integrity of your processes though, it is essential that leadership is always aware of deviations and there's communication about the reasoning behind it, as well as acknowledgment of any risks associated with not following the standard. When a deviation produces a negative result, it is useful in that it often teaches us something and reinforces the importance of following our processes. When deviations go well, we often make new discoveries that allow us to improve our processes.
Please document, train, and actively supervise effective processes in every facet of your business for all the reasons listed above and more. Just don't allow the existence of those processes to create a rigidity that gets in the way of sound judgment, creativity, and executive decision-making.
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