If you’ve been to the grocery store, you know the check out procedure. If you are paying at the pump, you know the procedure. If you have electrical appliances, you know that there's a standard that makes one of the prongs on the plug bigger than the other and safe to plug in.
These are everyday applications of procedures and standards -- and you know what happens when the procedures or standards are not followed. Things go wrong: missed appointments, conflicts, embarrassment, unusable equipment -- you name it.
Since everyone can so readily recognize this law of nature, why is it that so many companies have such trouble managing their own procedures and standards? There are laws that require them, there are people that know about them, but too often, they just miss the mark.
Well, for one thing, not everyone knows how to write policies, procedures and standards. Most IT departments have been doing some of this writing for many years but for many business folks, it's not the type of writing that we normally do.
If you want to do your customers, employees and investors a favor -- not to mention pleasing your auditors and regulators -- take a closer look at my Policy Management post, and then take a look at your procedures and standards. In there, I shared my expectations for policies:
- Version Control
- Available
- Consistent format
- Consistent terminology
- Concise
- Simple
- Policy Development
- Policy Approval
- Security
If you need to improve your organization's ability to develop effective procedures and standards, talk to your current resource pool or consult with technical writers experienced in developing these types of documents, check their work, get references and have them come in for a few weeks to help get you started. It will be time and money well spent -- policies, procedures and standards will be around longer than you and I and the model you establish early on will set the stage for all that is to come.
1 comment:
In my experience, too many organizations attempt to work from off-the-shelf products in developing policies and procedures. When that approach is taken, the policies often end up being aspirational, rather than practical. Aspirational P&Ps are dangerous because they may later be used to demonstrate that an organization made a considered decision as to reasonable practices in a particular area, then failed to follow that standard.
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