A few weeks ago we started answering the question, “How do I get my people to actually follow procedures?” Let’s continue.
There are lots of parts to this solution, so review the blog to catch up, and stay tuned going forward, as well.
One reason people don’t follow procedures is they lack faith in the accuracy and real-life applicability of those procedures.
For people to follow procedures they have to be confident in them. And this is not something they consider on a case by case basis.
As soon as their confidence is shaken a few times by inaccurate procedures, they give up on the whole idea.
Fair or not, they stop referring to ALL the procedures, because they’ve been burned once too often.
It’s true. Nothing will derail your systemization efforts faster…
…than continually implementing newly designed processes and procedures that are severely flawed.
Your team will get frustrated, discouraged and – like I said – find it very difficult to support the effort.
The solution is simple … effective testing BEFORE implementation.
Testing could involve actually doing the new process (if possible) as documented, or you may only need a mental walk-through. The key is this …
You (or a team member) must pretend you have no knowledge of the process and follow the documentation as written.
Otherwise, you’ll make mental assumptions that prevent you from seeing the flaws.
The documentation must guide someone with minimal training to successful completion of the task.
When you discover a flaw during testing, simply tweak the process, update the documentation and try again. Clear your mind and test it again as if you know very little.
Of course, perfection is not possible. You’re bound to implement a well-tested process and still run into flaws in real-life.
That’s OK. The goals of the testing process are to eliminate severe flaws and minimize all flaws.
Remaining minor flaws can be corrected without everyone losing faith in the system.
And we’ll talk about that aspect of getting your people to follow procedures next time.
