How do we tell whether a process is well designed and constructive?  First it’s to remember that process isn’t valuable as an end or a goal in and of itself.  Instead, process is a servant and strategy is the master.  Said differently: process should represent the structure that follows from the strategy in question.

Let’s make this a bit less abstract and a bit more tangible.  The first and most obvious place where things go awry is when fills the vacuum left in the absence of strategy.  The worst processes are found supporting activities where the objectives are never enunciated, unclear, or whether the principles involved in a process have conflicting understandings of the objective in question.

Good Process Starts with Strategy

The first step, therefore, to creating a good process should start with the strategy.  Everyone meaningfully involved in a process should be able to answer, in the same way, the question: “Why are we doing this?  What are we hoping to achieve by engaging in this process?”  Often, a process is streamlined and simplified radically simply by forcing the owners of the process to enunciate their objectives.  Often, making objectives explicit surfaces long-standing differences that necessitate discussion and resolution.

After identifying the objectives, the value of process should be measured by the degree to which it furthers the strategy in question.  Indeed, process is the structure that follows naturally from the strategy at hand.  Strategy, in other words, is the means by which we determine whether a process is effective.  Diverse strategies, therefore, can yield diverse and creative processes.

Examples of structure following strategy

For instance, is your strategy to try to get to market as quickly as possible?  This is likely to yield a minimalist process that likely involves fewer steps to approval and less QA.  Is your strategy to identify the top 3 or so issues that a business unit at a large company should be focused on?  This would require a much more participatory, and probably slower, process that might even involve research outside a company’s walls. It will also likely require multiple iterations on a proposed set of priorities before finalizing (because some level of agreement is necessary for such a strategy to stick).

How do you know if it’s working?

Beyond a constant reference to the objectives at hand, how do you know whether a process is successful or not?  Before even launching the process, leaders should define how they will measure the success of the initiative.  If the goal is speed to launch, there should be metrics around speed/progress every step of the way.  If the objective is improved customer and/or stakeholder satisfaction, that should be measured every step of the way through surveys (external and internal) including questions that drill down on each key component of the process in question.

These measures, in turn, should be used to constantly refine and improve the process in question.