One of the primary aims of Aligned Operations is to provide clarity to the organizations we work with. Successful organizations will clarify overall vision, how work is executed, and objectively evaluate results. Clarity in how work is executed starts with properly documenting the organization.
Clear documentation provides the following benefits:
Building Effective Teams
Teams trained with well-documented processes will execute workflow with less friction. Team members know how the tasks assigned need to be executed and how their execution impacts the team's overall desired results.
Providing a Basis for Evaluation
When performance benchmarks are not being met, documentation provides a basis to explore the cause and effect. Did the shortfall lie in the execution of a task or was the task itself flawed?
Maintaining Business Continuity
As staffing needs change, well documented organizations can quickly reassign tasks. With requisite execution maintained, customers continue to be satisfied and team members feel more fulfilled by completing new tasks successfully.
Increasing the Organization’s Value
Documenting the organization makes the organization's worth more tangible and by making it more tangible, the value of a company is illustrated and increased. Prospective buyers can clearly understand the organization’s secret sauce.
With the benefits of documentation so clear, why do organizations struggle to include documentation as part of their operations and management requirements? Excuses often include the following:
- We’re too busy
- I just like to do the work and not worry about documenting
- I’m just not good at it.
These barriers can be overcome with accountability, an intuitive methodology, and observable success.
Accountability
The role of the manager needs to include documenting their departments. An audit of the department’s documentation is a critical step for ensuring completion. When managers are too busy, it means they haven’t properly delegated front-line work to open space in their calendar for vital management responsibilities.
Intuitive Methodology
Mental barriers are a result of confusion and doubt. To overcome this an organization must provide the management team with a shared methodology that facilitates the execution of documentation. The primary requirement of the methodology is to create results with minimal overhead.
Observable Success
Organizations that maintain accurate documentation have experienced situations where it has made a significant impact. Clear documentation improves training in the event of unexpected staff changes and allows team members to confidently complete tasks which are executed infrequently.
So where do you start? At Aligned Operations, we recommend starting with these three aspects of the Organization:
The Managerial Accountability Hierarchy (MAH)
The MAH is represented in an Organizational Chart. Simply put, the Org chart represents the high-level breakdown of the all the work in the organization and who is accountable for it. It represents the primary functions and the manager support hierarchy. Maintaining the MAH is the responsibility of the COO, GM or Integrator
Departmental Task Inventory
The task is the basic unit of work in the organization. It has clear start/completion points and has an assigned benchmark. Tasks represent a collection of steps that, when executed, contribute to a desired result in the department. Maintaining the Task Inventory is the responsibility of each department manager.
Role Descriptions
Successful organizations include team members that understand what they are going to be held accountable for. This starts when they are hired and continues as they progress upward through the organization. The task inventory can be leveraged through team member assignments to create role descriptions. Maintaining role descriptions is the responsibility of each department manager
Most business owners and leaders that I talk to agree that accurate documentation would benefit their organization, but few organizations progress in this effort. Discipline to documentation becomes part of the organization’s culture as the leaders embody it in their own efforts and by proving standardized solutions that can automate and integrate the documentation processes.