Our “Process” is under attack; by us.

Recently, if you’ve bugged our office you’d be hearing the word “Process” tossed around with great frequency. This sounds ironic coming from a company which disdains corporate red-tape and culture. Yet I feel that Process has gotten a bad rap over the years. It’s been associated with words like ridged, out-dated, creativity-killer, soul-crusher… you get the point. In fact, I believe the opposite is true.

A great process is like having a common language between your entire team. Anyone new, coming into that team should be able to learn the language and immediately contribute. Similar to a language; processes need to be malleable and grow organically over the years. We’ve looked at ourselves in the mirror and determined that much of our success is dependent upon our chemistry and culture. While these things work well at first, they don’t allow your company to grow. They really fail once someone leaves either on vacation or permanently. Events like that will clearly cause havoc in a company which is glued together by chemistry.

Documenting Process allows us to quickly pick-up where another has left off. When a failure happens along the course of a project, it is the process that can be refined. Teams which clearly understand and execute an effective process will spend less time thinking about how to do something and more time can be dedicated to execution and creativity.