One of the hardest questions to answer is: "What do you do?" But understanding this question, and being able to answer it, is crucially important for developing your own overall effectiveness. When I ask my clients this question, I generally get a list of aphorisms and marketing-speak:
"We create high-quality products for the indoor foliage alternative market!"
That's great but it's really not what I mean.
We're talking about verbs. At the end of the day, which verbs correspond to what you do on a daily basis? There are a few ways to get at this information:
Parse your job description. Go through your job description or your performance appraisal. Make a list of all the verbs. Add verbs for things that your job description has missed.
Keep a log. Write down what you do on an ongoing basis. Create a list of tasks that state [verb]+[object], for example, "Write performance appraisals." It helps to keep a notebook in your pocket to capture these thoughts and ideas. Personally, I carry a little Moleskine notebook and golf pencils.
Conduct a personal SIPOC exercise to identify what it is that you actually do. SIPOC is an abbreviation for Supplier, Input, Process, Output, Customer. SIPOC exercises are frequently used in quality management efforts. For a personal SIPOC, consider suppliers to be parties who supply you with information (customers, clients, management, etc.). Customers are parties to whom you give information. Think about the documents, records, and artefacts that you work with (inputs and outputs). Then name the processes that involve the use or creation of those artefacts.
Review the list of tasks and rank them in terms of both their overall importance to you and the amount of time you spend doing them. Ideally, you could outsource low-importance and time-consuming tasks. The reality is that it might be very difficult to do so if there's nobody else to do them! Regardless, sort the tasks into A, B, and C categories. It's that A category that you really want to look at. They're your personal productivity processes (P3).
This guidance is primarily for work-related processes or competencies. This same rigor could, however, be applied to pretty much anything you do. If cooking dinner is an incredibly important process for you it might deserve formal analysis as a P3.
Every P3 should have both a general philosophy and some kind of process document. If the task includes a clearly defined objective then there should also be a standard template or form. If the P3 is particularly important then it's also a good idea to create some kind of quality review document.
Let's take the previous example: "write performance appraisals." We want to reduce the cognitive load of executing this P3 and improve its overall effectiveness. Process documentation could look something like:
Process
Write performance appraisals
Philosophy
I want to write performance appraisals that recognize the value of team members and their unique contributions to the team. The appraisals also have to effectively capture the metrics upon which those team members will be compensated.
Process
Download template from https://xyz.xyz/1
Download team metrics report from https://xyz.xyz/2
Review personal notes maintained in OneNote and apply staff-specific tags
Create summary reports in OneNote
Generate PA templates for staff using the spreadsheet at c:\xyz via mail merge
Collect 360 reports from email into a folder
Complete PAs
Schedule PA meetings at 9:00AM and 2:00PM. Ask staff to resolve conflicts.
Quality Control
Verified PA template is current
Verified metrics report is current and complete
PA generated for all staff
PA meetings booked
PA meetings completed
PA information provided to HR
Supporting documentation
HR PA appraisal policy from https://xyz.xyz/3
HR training on how to create a PA using HRIS https://xyz.xyz/4
These work instructions are yours alone and don't have to be shown or shared with anyone else. They could live on a file share or in a PIM like OneNote, in a dedicated "Processes" folder.
Naming the processes is a bit tricky. You could file them alphabetically or you could use a numbered system. Personally, I like to use a structured model for business processes such as APQC's Process Classification Framework.
Bottom Line: The most important processes are those that are personal to you. Create a method for standardizing your own processes even if the organization as a whole isn't so keen on quality control.
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