When you say the word process, when you think process, when you do process, you often think ‘boring’. Process has no pizzazz to it. It can be a bit like groundhog day doing the series of steps to get you to an end goal that is ultimately what a process is. It’s a little bland especially when we’d like to achieve that end result immediately! And this is where we need to disrupt our thinking around process. We need to bring sexy back to process because a process executed well is where the magic starts to happen and goals come to fruition. And that is rather sexy!
What on earth am I talking about? Let me explain.
We are operating in a world of now. We want everything instantly, we want results immediately, we want to sprint up the career ladder, we want our team to be brilliant now, and we want our culture fixed fast. There’s nothing sexy about wanting it all unless you’re going to put in the work to get there. And this is where to gap is.
I was made aware of a situation in a large organisation where performance was lacking considerably. They were way behind target. So the demand from the CEO was for performance to be improved significantly within a month. Something I think we’d agree we’d all like to see in that situation. However, this company has a huge workforce, is heavily unionised and the history of non-performance in this particular area is consistent. The result isn’t the issue – it’s the indicator that something is very wrong. They don’t have a ‘performance’ issue, they have a significant culture issue that is impacting on performance and they aren’t going to change that in a month. This is going to take some very hard work and time investment to turn this situation around. Something that the powers that be aren’t interested in. They want change now. They want performance now. However, if they followed a process to assess what the real issue was when performance started to decline they may now have a change of rectifying that. As it stands, aside from a bandaid fix, nothing is going to change.
There’s a lot of talk about what we want but there’s no a lot of talk about who is willing to put in the work to get there. And those who are willing to put in the work, to develop a process, to work that process and track and monitor the process are those who are injecting sexy back into business and life. These are the ones who will achieve growth, goals, leadership, and career progression, create a legacy and more. Process is to be loved!
In saying that, what processes do you have in place for the following?
- Coaching your team
- Working your network
- Supporting your culture
- Driving performance
- Implementing and supporting change
- Building trust
- Retaining talented staff
- Attracting top talent
- Recognise and reward your team
The list could go on but these give you some examples of where having robust processes in place will support the outcomes you want to achieve. And it’s certainly not to say that a process is carved in stone. As our business dynamics are constantly evolving, our processes do too. That’s where we need to ensure we are tracking and monitoring the processes and what we are achieving.
The key message here is we need to recognise the value of the process. We can’t simply wish for a goal to be achieved. It’s the process that will filter out those who say they want it from those who will make it happen. Making it happen is where the sexy is! We need to appreciate that processes can take time. If you think about the process a seed takes from the time of planting until it grows into a tree, there are numerous processes it goes through and it doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time.
Let’s bring sexy back to process. Let’s stop thinking that it’s lame and boring. Those who walk their talk are super attractive in my world and shine brightly alongside those who simply choose to talk a big game.
P.S. I apologise if you now have Justin Timberlake’s song ‘SexyBack’ chiming through your mind as I do.