The following article is reprinted with permission from BizManualz

How to Write Procedures to Increase Control

Part 1 of a four-part series

Part 1: How to Write Procedures to Increase Control?
Part 2: Writing Procedures for Results
Part 3: Who are Procedures Written for?
Part 4: What's the Difference Between Policies and Procedures

Procedures and Process Control

Why are you developing policies and procedures in the first place?  Common answers include to:

1. Decrease training time.
2. Increase consistency.
3. Fulfill compliance requirements.
4. Present risks, hazards and lessons learned.
5. Communicate effectiveness measures.
6. Retain and transfer knowledge.
7. Document improvement and change.
8. Decrease error rate.
9. Simplify access to information.
10. Ease replication and growth.

Procedures and Management Control

Aren’t procedures really about decreasing variability? As we decrease process variability we increase process control. Management wants control.  Management control, process control, internal controls, or controlled outputs.  Policies and procedures provide the foundation for control that management wants and that regulators or auditors demand.  Only now, the importance of management control has increased due to the attention being given to corporate governance, of which internal control is considered to be a critical element.

Compliance Drives Procedures

Compliance only increases, it never decreases does it?  Recently we’ve seen accounting procedures required by Sarbanes Oxley legislation to combat fraud and misrepresentation.  But procedures are not new.  In manufacturing, procedures are needed for ISO 9000 Quality conformance.  The FDA requires Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) or Good Laboratory Practices (GLP).  But compliance is a symptom not a cause.  To get to the root cause of why we need procedures we need to look at what needs to be in control.

Processes, Procedures and Control

There are three types of processes that exhibit varying levels of control: ballistic process, controlled process and adaptive process.  A ballistic process is the most common.  Anytime you feel frustration and you have no way to provide any feedback to correct the problem you are encountering a ballistic process.  Notice how we talk about process versus a procedure.  That is because a process consists of one or more procedures.  In the simple case a process may consist of only one procedure.

Ballistic Process

The dictionary defines ballistic as “characteristic of the motion of objects moving under their own momentum”.  When used to describe a procedure or process it means that the procedure only cares about getting its own work accomplished and it is not interested in your input. 

Perhaps you have seen this in school in the educational process.  The teacher presents the material anyway they want.  If you don’t understand it then it’s your problem.  Typical symptoms of this behavior include the need for tutoring, students falling behind, failing, studying harder or loosing interest and leaving the class.  There is a better way…

Controlled Process

When we talk about control we do not mean as in dominance or power.  Process control comes from systems theory “where the inputs of the system are manipulated or transformed to realize an expected output of the system”.  The key here is to monitor the inputs and outputs and make corrective changes to the process in order to achieve the desired output or transformation of those inputs.  How would this work for our classroom teacher?

In this case, the teacher would present their material and then check the students understanding.  If the student was not absorbing the material as expected (expectations based on statistical modeling of past student behavior) then the teacher would take corrective action to fix the process, NOT THE STUDENT.

An important concept was just introduced regarding a controlled process.  Note that a controlled process makes adjustments to the process to compensate for the variance of student behavior, while a ballistic process requires that the student makes the adjustments to their behavior to compensate for their learning problem.  

Obviously a ballistic process is easier to create and use. It requires a lot less work on the part of the teacher.  All the teacher has to do is present their material and if the student doesn’t learn then it’s the student’s fault, not the teacher.  With a controlled process, the teacher has to figure out why the student is not learning as expected.  The key is understanding what is expected by the system.  Therefore, we need data on past student performance in order to understand what changes to make to the process or system.

I know some of you might be thinking that perhaps the student is not ready for this class.  Ok, then the system change is to have the student acquire the appropriate prerequisites in order to pass this class.  This is not the same as the student attending tutoring or studying harder.  Both of these are in process rework measures.  Adding prerequisites change the input specifications, if this is an option.

So if we are responsive to our students needs and the process is changing then are we done?  Not yet, there is one more level to the evolution of control.  The need to adapt.

Adaptive Process

The ultimate process is one that learns.  We call this an adaptive process that “can change over time to improve effectiveness”.  The idea is to review all the changes being made to the process required to compensate for the student learning variance.  Are the right changes being made?  Are enough changes being made?  How has the environment changed?  One must step back and look beyond the process. 

Perhaps the learning methods employed are 20 years old and new methods have been invented or new technology has come out.  Overtime, with enough input data and enough process changes we will eventually reach a limit to the process’ effectiveness.  The changes will become so incremental that they may not be worth the effort to change.  In this case it is time to adapt or evolve to a new state.

This is not change for change’s sake.  We need to look at methods and technology that can improve the process’ effectiveness.  This may include an entire course redesign.  One must be open to new ideas at this stage and not dogmatically cling to the old ways if you can demonstrate that the new ideas are more effective.  As you might expect, an adaptive process is the hardest to create. 

Management Systems Control

Sure procedures provide control but what kind?  Organizations are systems that require systems controls.  But if you don’t understand systems theory then you might be inclined to interpret management control as dominance or power.  But, this is not really control at all.  A ballistic process is about dominance.  A controlled process is about achieving an expected outcome.  But the adaptive process is about the future, achieving an expected vision for your organization, and delivering the ultimate control management is really seeking. 

Which kind of processes are you building when you write your procedures?

We have been talking a lot about control and procedures because it’s the number one reason why people really develop procedures.  Management wants to improve their control over a condition that they are unhappy about.  The only problem is that the procedures they commission to write only describe an existing bad condition.  They end up ballistic.  In order to really improve the condition one must understand the system, expected outcomes, and have good data describing the condition.  Only then can we actually improve the condition.