Read This if You Think Process Documentation is Futile
Leading teams in financial services showed me why it’s important to get process documentation right- here’s the philosophy I used to do just that.
“If you can’t describe what you are doing as a process, you don’t know what you’re doing.” — W. Edwards Deming
I started my career in the nuclear navy as a submarine officer where everything was written down… EVERYTHING. All of our policies, processes, and procedures were well documented and constantly used for training and reference in the normal course of our work. They were a vital part of doing our jobs effectively. Now, in my role leading teams in financial services, things are very different. We have policies, processes, and procedures but they don’t play the essential role they did in the Navy. Most of these documents are more like high-level memos. None of them could be given to a new hire to use in training or to help them understand how to do their job. They don’t actually help employees do their jobs better. In fact, when I try to write process documentation in more detail, I actually get push back from the employees themselves. So if employers and employees don’t want descriptive and specific process…
