Wow. Don't you love it when you read something that succinctly and poetically summarizes a core believe you've had your entire professional career? I tip my hat to Ms. Sally Credille, a blogger and Young Engineer group moderator that I supervise for the Society of Automotive Engineers (now SAE Int'l). Sally wrote this phrase during a post about how its important to keep learning, but sometimes, it's more important to unlearn...but let's get back to the poetry, "A Sound Process Equals Success."
If I've heard it once, I've heard it a hundred times from SMB [small-medium biz] clients: Yeah, that's a great idea, but we can't get our employees to do it. Or, sure we can do that -- and one month after you stop doing it for them, the activity disappears.
I'm not going to comment on leaders that can't get their employees to do as instructed, but I do want to point out how important a process is to create a new habit. And habits are 90% of our lives -- both personal and professional. A process is a check list. It's a road map that spells out steps towards a goal, battles to a war. Once it's on paper, can be posted, and used as a benchmark to judge the effectiveness (aka, review, raise, etc.) of an employee, a process becomes a powerful tool for change.
Nothing is impossible, if you know the steps to making it happen, make it into a process, and hold accountable those tasked to do the job. Change CAN happen for the better.
