ThemeOperations & Process
CardCard 47 of 66
Questions5 to explore

Processes

Methodology & processes

The way your organization actually does things is usually more specific and more improvised than any methodology document suggests.

Most organizations have a version of how they do things: a process for onboarding a client, a methodology for running a project, a set of steps for getting a product to market. But the version in people's heads is usually different from the version in any document, because the document was written once and reality kept evolving.

What is worth capturing is the real process: the steps people actually follow, the variations that happen in practice, and the judgment calls that experience has taught people to make. That is harder to document than a clean diagram, but far more useful.

Processes are also worth capturing in their current state of incompleteness. An organization that is still figuring out how it does something benefits from making that uncertainty explicit, so people stop assuming there is a correct answer they have not been told about.

What to capture

For this part of the company brain, what is worth writing down and keeping current. The goal is not a complete archive but a living record that new people can read and returning people can trust.

Core operational processes

A list of the most important recurring processes, each with a plain-language description of the steps, the owner, and where exceptions are handled.

Where processes live

A note on where process documentation is stored and whether those documents are actively maintained or historical artifacts.

Known variations

Cases where the standard process does not apply, the most common workarounds, and how teams communicate when they are doing something differently.

Process ownership

Who is responsible for each core process and who should be consulted when it needs to change.

Questions to explore

Use these on your own or in a group. There are no right answers, only better conversations.

What are the five or six most critical processes in the organization, and is each one documented in a way someone could follow without help?
Where does the process documentation live, and when was it last updated to reflect how things actually work now?
Which processes have the most variation in practice, and does the organization know about and accept that variation?
Who owns each core process and is responsible for improving it when it stops working well?
What is the process for changing a process, and does that meta-process itself exist anywhere?

Things to notice

Process documentation written to describe an ideal state rather than the current reality creates false confidence; it is more honest and more useful to describe what actually happens, including the workarounds.
Processes with no clear owner tend to drift; when nobody is responsible for a process, it is nobody's job to notice when it stops working.
The most important processes are often the hardest to document because they involve the most tacit judgment; a step-by-step list can miss exactly the discretion that makes the process work.