Are Your P&Ps GOOD or Bad? Here’s the Definitive Test

Many companies have heated internal debates on this question: “Are our written policies and procedures (P&Ps) good or bad? “ How do you know?

Some people measure quality based on whether P&Ps exist and are physically accessible to staff, whether they are grammatically correct, or how they look. Criticisms range from “Our P&Ps are too long” “We don’t have enough pictures” “We need different fonts.” “Playscript format is best” “No, a flowchart is the answer.” “We don’t need details.” “We need much more detail.” and on and on.

When it comes judging to the quality of your policy and procedures manuals, it’s all a matter of opinion, right? Wrong! In this post, we show you how to tell OBJECTIVELY if your corporate policies and procedures are “good” or not.

The definitive test is how you answer this questions: Are we getting the PERFORMANCE results we want?

The term “Performance results” is a little broad, so we’ve broken it down into 7 specific areas relating to operations and training. If you answer YES to just one question, your standard operating procedures are either missing in action or need fixing and you are not getting the return you should for the time, money, and effort you’re spending on writing policies and procedures.

Diagnosis Checklist

1. Training Difficulties
   Does it take too long to get new employees productive? Do supervisors spend too much time answering the same questions? Is training inconsistent? (How are you training your people?)


2. Inefficiencies, Slowness
   Does it take too long to: Perform routine tasks? Open new locations? Take a business concept and “franchise” it? Implement major changes? Roll-out new systems? Launch new products?


3. Errors, Waste (Quality Control)
   Are people making too many errors? Do you have difficulty controlling the quality of service, products without a lot of labor and oversight.


4. Knowledge Retention
   Are there areas where you would be at significant risk or project failure if your STAR performer or consultant left today? Are best practices in peoples’ heads? Are your “experts” overwhelmed by people constantly asking them for help?


5. Inconsistency / One-offs
   Are work processes inconsistent? Is there a significant variance in how one person performs a job vs. another person? Do people often re-invent the wheel?


6. Fire-fighting
   Are managers spending too much time fighting fires, dealing with mundane issues, instead of mentoring employees and focusing on innovation?


7. Regulatory Compliance / Liability Risk
   Are there areas of exposure? High risks? Are Board Members signing off on policies they aren’t reading and don’t fully understand?

Anyone of these issues by itself is serious. The financial impact could be costing you tens of thousands of dollars (or could possibly even you out of business).

A “good” P&P system is the most efficient and least costly way to alleviate these problems, so if you still have them, whatever you’re doing (or not doing) isn’t working. Here’s the bottom line.

If people are USING your corporate Policy and Procedure manuals and achieving the expected results with minimal supervision, then you get an A+. If you have operations, quality, and training costs under control and down to a science, then whatever you are doing is working. If you have a systematic and sustainable way to transfer the best practices of your star performers then BRAVO.

That’s the true test of whether P&Ps are GOOD or not. Nothing else really matters.

Through our Operations Mapping approach and Zavanta software, COMPROSE helps our clients design their policy and procedure systems that meet this test. 

Source: https://www.comprose.com/are-your-pps-good-or-bad-heres-the-definitive-test/

How to Implement an Effective Knowledge Management Program?

A successful knowledge management system in an organization helps employees utilize the knowledge to increase productivity, improve work quality, and ensure consistency in deliverables. Many companies are capitalizing on knowledge management software for data mining, document management, community forums, and blogging. However, they don’t consider defining their objectives and the ways to manage their knowledge assets for achieving long-term goals.

To develop an effective knowledge management program, an organization must consider certain essential elements like people, technology, structure, processes, and culture. An organization must determine the ways to boost the efficiency of staff, to create best practices for recognizing, regulating and dispersing accurate knowledge, to select tools for automating knowledge management, to transform business structure for promoting awareness, and to establish a knowledge-based culture.

Here is a step-by-step process of building an effective knowledge management system in your company.

1. Identifying Knowledge Management Needs
   The first step is to identify what type of knowledge you need to document for developing and executing a successful business strategy. You can establish both long-term and short-term program objectives to facilitate the business drivers.


2. Determine the Knowledge Assets
   The management must identify and plan to get maximum returns out of competitors, government agencies, technology, suppliers, processes, products and other knowledge assets of their organization.


3. Analyze the Type of Content
   You may conduct cross-functional research to gather qualitative insights on problems that customers are facing. This will help you decide what type of content needs to be included in the knowledge management program.


4. Define the Process and Structure
   Knowing how knowledge is gathered, categorized, managed, and disseminated will help organizations utilize the full potential of their knowledge management system. A high-end knowledge management process will help in an effective management of your company’s knowledge assets.


5. Implementing a Knowledge Management Program
   The program can be established through knowledge assets and by making situations that need the emergence of a learning organization. Converting a raw information into knowledge can be highly useful to achieve business goals. Moreover, emergent conditions make individuals’ knowledge available for business purpose.


6. Storage, Utilization & Distribution of Knowledge 
   A well-defined knowledge management system includes knowledge repositories to preserve and acquire knowledge, to utilize knowledge for making business decisions, and a collective knowledge access to all the members of the organization.


7. Measuring Knowledge Management System
   How will you check the effectiveness of investment in Knowledge Management Software and the significance of knowledge management program? You need to measure the impact of a program on organizational performance and forge techniques for improving the system. 

5 Ways to Finally Get Your Procedure Manuals Done

We’re amazed at the number of people who really want to develop better standard operating procedures for their organization, who clearly understand the benefits of standardized procedures and who even have management mandates and funded projects to develop or update their policies and procedure manuals. But–despite all that–never manage to actually do anything about it. They have good intentions. They hold meetings. They discuss requirements. Sometimes, they even open up the word processor. But that’s as far as they get. Momentum grinds to a halt. Years can go by with no usable results.

If this sounds familiar, maybe you need some better strategies to get back on track.

Here is a list of 5 Simple Strategies that work to break the logjam and finally get your procedure manuals to project off the drawing board and across the finish line.

1. Start Small
   Don’t try to do everything at once–you’ll get overwhelmed. Instead, pick just one key task or operating process. Develop just that content and then publish it and start getting feedback. You’ll get a quick win. Then go on to the next area, and the next, piece by piece in bite-size chunks.
   
   
2. Divide and Conquer
   Many hands make light work. To cover a lot of ground rapidly, involve a large pool of subject experts to contribute first drafts. Then edit their work. Each person has only a small part to do, but the combined effort gives fast results.
   
   
3. Set Goals
   There’s nothing like a deadline to provoke action. If your CEO demands that the Operations Manual be done by October, you’ll figure out a way to get it done. So, if you’re stalled because there is no external deadline, set one and stick to it.
   
   
4. Learn from the Experts
   Sometimes projects bog down because the task is new and your team lacks experience and confidence. Consulting a third-party expert can often jumpstart your momentum. Consider a staff training or enrolling your team in some educational webinars.
   
   
5. Get the Right Tools
   If your project is stalled, the problem might be that you lack the right system. Traditional word processors and general-purpose software have proven cumbersome, ineffective and costly for creating and updating effective corporate Policy and Procedure manuals. Investigate if there are better tools for your needs. COMPROSE invented Zavanta software to provide a faster, better way to get high-quality results.

Source: https://www.comprose.com/5-ways-to-finally-get-your-procedure-manuals-done/

4 Critical Features of Knowledge Management System

Over the past decade, the internet has witnessed a substantial growth by empowering itself with various social innovations. These innovations encourage people to collaborate in novel ways, enable them to deal with problems, and empower them to be more competitive. This eases our access to advanced research and improves our ability to create a compelling and meaningful content. As a result, organizations tend to believe the fact that the best knowledge transfer and retention systems are both online and collaborative. 

Knowledge management is a process of gathering, obtaining, creating, and using knowledge by the organizations to gain a competitive edge for growth and prosperity in a globalized economy. However, choosing an effective knowledge management system is both a critical and difficult task. With a countless knowledge management software and systems persisting in the market, each one has its unique features. 

Nevertheless, we will unveil some key features that ideal knowledge management software must possess. 

1. Easy Accessibility 
   One of the major problems faced by companies in the past was that their knowledge management systems have simple features and were optimized for limited web browsers which causes a challenging working environment. Your knowledge management software must be well-optimized for users working on different platforms like mobile phones, desktop computers, tablets, etc.
   
   
2. Integration with Other Applications
   The knowledge management system must have an interface with other applications including Enterprise Resource Management (ERM), Customer Relationship Management (CRM), and Enterprise Content Management (ECM). This will allow businesses to integrate the required information without looking across multiple software applications.
   
   
3. Personalized Approach 
   A tailored knowledge system in an organization enables the staff to customize and configure user-interface based on their individual preferences. With a personalized feature in knowledge management software, the information can be accessed on any hardware platform such as desktop, smartphone, laptop, or tablet, as well as on both the private and public networks.
   
   
4. Facilitate Interactive Communication 
   A smooth communication among employees is a must-have feature of the knowledge management system that supports both internal and external communication. Features like discussion forums, workgroups, instant messaging, blogs, chat rooms as well as hosting and recording online business meetings are highly effective in sharing information, growing their networks and connecting with the knowledge experts. 

These team-based features accelerate project-team activities including document management, decision-making, process tracking, and meeting schedules.

Whether you want a functional level or an enterprise level Knowledge Management Software for your business, evaluate these knowledge management features to leverage the maximum benefits of each feature differently.