So you’ve improved your process. It’s humming like a shiny new machine. How do you keep it that way?
The great English band Joy Division once sang “…she showed up all the errors and mistakes, and said I’ve lost control again” in their eponymous song “Control” – and they hit the nail on the head. Control is about reducing the errors in process, it is about reducing mistakes and it is about keeping the process true to its original intent.
When you create a new process or fix a broken one you must create process controls. What I mean by this is that you must have means of keeping the process on track. Think of it as being like a slalom skier going down a course. His goal is to get to the finish line, but he has to follow the flags or he gets disqualified. But how do you set controls?
Choosing the controls can be as simple as looking at your process and thinking about what are the drop dead, must happen steps in the process. How many you have depends on the complexity of the process (but don’t overdo it). Once you have decided upon your control steps you should continually audit the process to ensure that the control steps are being adequately met.
Ian Curtis, the lead singer of Joy Division eventually committed suicide – tortured by his inner demons and his inability to control his world. Thankfully we have the simpler task of controlling business processes, but the lesson here is the same: if you lose control you can be left with nothing.
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