Introduction

In daily business life I sometimes observe a frequent passivity and helplessness by managers who exclaim: “There is nothing one can do about it” often referring to the action or signature needed from an obstructing party and tremendous bureaucracy set up by an overly cautious controlling department stifling all business acumen of managers ‘in the field’. Although not in the organizations you and I are working currently, of course. With a simple mind-trick this barrier can be overcome.

The words

To resolve such situations we first need to dig a little deeper and make sure we properly understand the words we are using. The first key word is a process, which is according to Wikipedia “ … a set of recurrent or periodic activities that interact to produce a result.” Let’s compare that to a procedure, which is according to ISO9001 “ … a document that instructs workers on executing one or more activities of a business process. It describes the sequence of steps, and specifies for each step what needs to be done, often including when the procedure should be executed and by whom.”  The key difference to observe are the ‘when’ and the ‘by whom’.

For good measure I will also address the term work instruction which “…would provide more detail, for example the tools to use and how precisely to use the tools to carry out the procedure.” These tools in practice mean an explanation of screenshots etc. So a process or a procedure could be identical in two organizations, but the work instructions on the other hand could be completely different because one is employing SAP and the other Oracle.

The interpretation

One could argue that a process is purely descriptive whereas a procedure is prescriptive. The latter makes absolute sense in legal trajectories, where a house can not be sold without a signature from the house owner, and the notary public, of course.  In normal business there are also a certain need for risk reducing procedures: a contract of a certain value needs a signature of a person properly authorized to commit the organization for that amount or topic.

However, our society sees a risk-reducing tendency: somebody dies because of a mechanical error and all kinds of precautionary measures are being installed. This has brought us seat belts, airbags and the ABS braking system in cars which are good. In other industries similar developments can be identified. In care for the elderly something similar has happened: excesses like patients chained naked to a wall because the caring home did not have (or prioritize) the resources to manually care for her caused an uproar years ago, so regulation ensued. (Here I do not want to go into the merits or de-merits of this case by itself, where many words could be exchanged.) The risk of patients chained naked to a wall was reduced.

Other examples are the (Dutch) schools, hospitals, doctors, courts where so much time and effort is being spent on administration that time for their core activities is lacking or at least significantly reduced. The frustrating thing is that in the industries mentioned, many of these procedures are embedded in law, where many people with me draw a line that they do not want to cross. With me, many have chosen to not work in any of these industries, partially for that reason.

And sometimes the same applies also to private companies, where not only budgets need to be approved but also each and every request for a new employee. What this risk-reducing tendency says about the entrepreneurial spirit in that company is a different matter, of course.

The deeds

Sticking to a procedure is behavior of a person asking for permission to act, sticking to a process is behavior of a person explaining what he will do and has done, if necessary asking for forgiveness if he made a mistake. And let’s be frank,

• If you allow yourself to be beaten into submission and lethargy by procedures, do the organization, the job and you then fit together?
• If you make a major mistake such that apparently you are not worthy of fulfilling that job, shouldn’t you then quit yourself?
• If your employer wants to fire you for a minor mistake, do you then want to work for that employer?

In my experience, where I deviated from procedures with cause but stuck to the processes and was transparent about it, I only have received thumbs up from upper management so far. That had to do with the industries I have worked in. And maybe I have just been lucky in who I worked for.