Process Makes Perfect

“Sir, I wonder if you might expand a bit on the topic you discussed this past Friday,” I requested, kicking off another Monday talk.

“You mean picking software, Watson?” The Effective Detective asked.

“Actually, I was more intrigued by the passing comment about process, sir,” I replied.

The Detective gave me one of his sidelong glances indicating slight annoyance, but he answered. “Passing comment, Watson? That was actually the most important point of the whole bloody discussion!”

“Exactly, sir,” I recovered, ” which is why I am asking about it today.”

The Detective looked at me briefly, then, evidently deciding he would rather lecture me than chastise me, he started in.

“Defining a process before selecting software can be the only thing that ensures you don’t make a bloody mess out of the whole thing, Watson. However, the word process can sometimes elicit visions of massive flow diagrams and tables showing decision points and critical path, and other mumbo jumbo that project managers are sometimes so in love with.

“In fact defining a process can be no more than writing a list of a tasks on a piece of paper. The real trick is that it is on the piece of paper, or extremely well thought out in your head. A process is merely a set of steps that you follow to accomplish something.”

“But what if you are unfamiliar with the object of the process. Say, like email marketing?” I objected.

“Well Watson, the obvious thing would be to contract out or hire someone who does understand how to develop and implement a process, but failing that you can still develop a process using concepts that you do know,” The Detective answered, then immediately continued, giving me no chance to interrupt again.

“Let us take your email marketing example. Imagine if you meet someone at a networking event. Next imagine you are holding, oh,  say an interesting photograph. The person you are talking to shows an interest in photography and comments on the photograph you are holding. You offer it to him, if he will give you his address. He agrees, hands you his card, you thank him and shake his hand, hand him the picture and you both go off to meet someone else. When you get home, you pull out this person’s card, along with other cards you collected that night, send them all thank you notes, and let them know you will be sending out regular updates on photography and  other opportunities to get interesting photographs from you.

“You have just designed a process for staying in touch with prospects, providing them information, and the occasional offer. Just replace physical addresses with email addresses and hard copy letters with emails, and suddenly you have an email marketing campaign designed. You simply need to find the features in a software system that matches each part of your process. If the software doesn’t do all of them, then you either need to redefine your process, or find a different software product,” The Detective concluded and looked at me expectantly.

“That simple sir?” I asked raising one eyebrow.

“That simple, Watson. Of course there may be more steps involved, even some decision points that need to be inserted, but in the end, it all comes down to steps on paper. Once you have that, the rest is easy, or you can hand it off to someone else for implementation. Let us move on Watson,” The Detective finished, signalling it was time to take on a new subject.

“As you wish, sir. As you wish.”