Why You Should Give a Darn About Business Processes

You do it. I do it. Everyone does it, even babies. Babies do it with a little help from their parents. We all follow processes. We do things step-by-step because it works.

Babies cry, mess their diapers, sleep, eat, repeat. Many parents create a schedule for them — whether on paper or in the brain — to ensure they fill up on fuel at set times of the day. My husband and I created and modified our interactions with the infants that helped them learn to sleep through the night within three to six weeks. We had to modify our process as the baby adapted.

We have processes for getting dressed. If you put your shoes on first, it makes it harder to put on your pants. We have processes for brushing our teeth. The toothpaste needs to go on before you use the toothbrush. We have processes for driving cars. Can’t change gears until we first start the car.

I know many folks roll their eyes at the whole process business. But they do help you do better work.

Why Should I Bother with Processes?

Freelancers and contractors — whether working alone or with others — can create processes. Why bother? A few reasons:

• Cuts mistakes. When you have a process, you ensure you do all the steps or else you could overlook a step.
• Finish faster. Following the same routine for a task helps you move in a straight line instead of taking the long way. Of course, you may be able to speed up your process — that’s why we have “continuous process improvement.” Ugh, fancy words, but the right ones.
• Develop habits. For many of us, having a schedule or habit makes it easier to get the work done.
• Identify problems. When a client and I couldn’t figure out a problem, we walk through the steps. It often works.

I may be a one-person business, but I work with others. Some have formal processes and some informal. I have my own processes for managing invoicing, banking, social media time and more. So processes don’t always involve more than one person.

Keep Updating Those Processes

I’ve worked with Hank Stroll of InternetVIZ since 2001 when it was just three of us. The company publishes email newsletters. It still does, but it has added other elements as the industry matured and we offered more services. The company and team have grown a bit. The processes we had in place in 2001 look nothing like the ones we follow today. If we didn’t change, we wouldn’t succeed.

The processes help us stay on schedule, limit mistakes and take us through the steps beginning with article ideas and ending with going live.
If you can make it better, do it!

Documenting Processes

Should you document your processes? Well, it depends. If no one reads it, then there’s no point. OR, it could come in handy if you suddenly become ill. That way a family member or a back-up person knows what to do. You just need to make them aware of the document. If you get promoted or leave a job behind, the documented processes help the next person taking on the role.

I have been the webmaster chair for different non-profit organizations. I love the job, but it has one downside: The hand-off. Most non-profits only allow you to retain a position for two years. I created a living document that I updated as I did the job. It also contained information about the host, domain name, IDs and passwords. It worked and hand-off went smoother than expected.

Templates also come in handy especially for writers who do a lot of documentation. Templates ensure you include all the parts you need in the document. For example, I worked on a training team back in the days of my corporate career. We created training documents based on templates to keep it all consistent. On top of that, we had a process for writing, editing and submitting the documents. Of course, the process improved over the years as we found better ways of doing tasks.

I leave you with a quote that I love from this blog:

Process won’t help you if you suck. It will just make you suck more repeatably.

What processes do you have in your business? If you don’t have processes, tell us about it.