Agree on Process

June 24, 2014 Leave a comment

pillars

You might have picked up that I’m down on too much process and too much meeting.  It’s a funny place for someone that makes a living facilitating.  It is part of a semi-conscious effort to look at the opposite of my core assumptions and seek the wisdom there.

I think of Seth Godin as a “getting things done” guru, if you don’t ship it it’s not real.  So it was encouraging to read his brief post on paying attention to process.  He says something simple, yet insightful –

“If the process we’ve used in the past is broken, let’s fix it, because, in fact, getting that process right is actually more urgent than the problem we’ve got right now.”

So many of our complaints about process has to do with the fact that we have long, belabored, boring, overthought processes.  So the problem is not process itself.  We need to agree on process.  The problem is with bad process.

The question remains – can we design a process that stands on three pillars:

  • Inclusion of the affected stakeholders
  • Making choices
  • Learning by actually doing

What is the most nimble, least painful way to do this?

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *