mrprocedure

Now we get to the central theme of this series. If I have a procedure whose relevance has been established through task identification, and I have written it in such a way as to enable learning, then it is time to put the procedure to work!

Which begs the question: can a worker learn how to perform a task simply by reading a procedure? In my past, I was very new in a position, writing procedures to describe mixing equipment and performing training classes based on the procedures. One of the veteran operators in the mixing area commented to me, “You know Tim, you can’t just read a procedure and then know how to do the task.”

I was shocked! I was offended!

No, actually, I knew this going in. A procedure in and of itself does not make a training program. Of course I would never expect a new operator to come in, read a procedure (even one I had written) and be able to perform the task. But the procedure is a critical element of training, if it is used appropriately in a training structure.

In my work, I developed and taught what I called a “Seven-step” sequence of training. It is based on the principles of adult learning and also on an understanding of how the method of information presentation affects retention. I won’t detail the Seven Steps here (after all, I have to keep something to sell), but I will state that the first step is to have the trainee read the procedure.

Many of you who are familiar with the statistics on retention will note that reading achieves a retention level of about 10%. This would tend to suggest the procedure-reading step is a waste of time. However, I do not intend or expect the operator will memorize much (if any) of the procedure.

But the procedure serves a vital purpose. For one, it sets the boundaries for training. It also fixes the content of training. The procedure, in a very real sense, forms a contract between the organization, the trainer and the trainee. From an organizational point of view, it states “this is what comprises proper and complete performance of the task.” To the trainee, it contains everything he/she needs to learn to achieve proficiency. And to the trainer, it contains everything I need to teach the trainee.

I cannot emphasize that last point enough. If you have ever been a new trainee in a position, you have likely experienced this. Without a procedure, you are completely at the mercy of what the trainer tells you. If the trainer forgets something, you don’t learn it. If, after you make a mistake, the trainer says, “Oh, gee, I forgot to tell you that,” you’ve likely lost confidence in yourself and the trainer (what else did he/she not tell me?).

So, step 1 of the Seven Steps is to have the learner read the procedure (or a part of it). In the final post of this series, I will conclude by describing why procedure-reading is so vital to the training process.

To structure procedures to facilitate learning, the procedure should establish learning “hooks” early on, and use these hooks to hang additional learning. In general, a procedure flow would look like this:

1. An introduction that describes the content of the procedure. The introduction, in concert with the procedure title (which in nearly every case would coincide with the description of a task), sets the boundaries around the learning. The learner is told what the procedure will describe, with the implied understanding that only information relevant to the task (identified in the title) will be presented.

2. Basic description of the task specifics. If the task focuses on operating a piece of equipment, then this section is used to build a task vocabulary. Terms are defined in this section.

3. More detailed description of task specifics. Again, if the task focuses on operating a piece of equipment, the description is expanded. Components within a section may be described (and illustrated), and controls for components may also be described.

4. Descriptions of specific activities. An “activity” is any set of actions that can be described in a sequence of numbered steps. In other words, it’s the “things the worker does” to perform the task and achieve the desired outcome.

5. Specialized information. This may include responses to upset or out-of-control conditions, or how to restart a process after an emergency condition has occurred.

With this type of structure, the learner is introduced to concepts, and details are built onto concepts to create more complete learning. This progression is simplified for the purpose of the blog post; there is much more layering and sectional structure that occurs in a procedure. These are covered in the procedure-writing course I have offered in previous posts and offer again, simply by asking me at mrprocedure@gmail.com.

The course is free until August 1. After that, the price doubles!

Procedures must connect directly to the work performed to be effective in achieving their desired intent. That is the “relevance” test.

The second critical element of the procedure is that they must be learning-focused. Since the procedure is only as valuable as the learning enabled by it, the procedure must be structured in a way that helps the worker to learn how to perform the task.

A learning-focused procedure must take into account the realities of adult learning. (I have never written procedures for child-labor camps, so adults have been my exclusive audience.) One of the key elements of adult learning is that adults learn best when they can “hook” a concept to a concept they have already learned or understand. To simply throw thousands and thousands of words (with a few photos thrown in) together in some linear progression may result in a procedure, but it will not result in learning.

A previous employer had me review a procedure for a piece of processing equipment at one of their production locations. When I received a copy of the Word file containing the procedure, it was a quarter of a gigabyte. The table of contents alone was 12 pages, the whole document over 200 pages. Any fact even remotely connected to operating the equipment was included in this procedure. While all of the information was there, it was not arranged in any way that would facilitate learning.

(Side note: this leads to another reason procedures can exist. The structure of the procedure suggested its primary purpose was to nail anyone who performed incorrectly for “failure to follow procedure.” Knowing the manager responsible for the procedure, I am certain I am correct in this assessment.)

To develop a learning-focused procedure, I use a technique I liken to “wading into progressively deeper water.” In short, I create hooks in the early parts of procedures and attach new learning to those hooks as the procedure topic is developed. This I will focus on in Part 6.

A situation in one of my previous career stops illustrates the importance of having a defined list of “work that is performed.”

The company I worked for had a three-roll mill, also called a paint mill. The mill was used to grind solid materials into fine particulate materials (usually suspended in a resinous mix).

In the past, I had written an operating procedure on the paint mill. The procedure included all of the basic elements of a procedure designed to facilitate learning. The procedure was put in place and employees were trained to its performance standards.

Several years later, an employee was cleaning the paint mill, and suffered a laceration when he contacted the edge of the mill’s “doctor blade.” (A doctor blade scrapes material off of the last roll, allowing it to be collected for storage.) An investigation took place, as would be expected when the organization declares “Safety is the core of all we do.” The investigation recommended a cover be built to cover the blade during cleaning, to prevent inadvertent contact. Good idea. So a cover was built, and it was placed onto the mill.

All was good and well until I was approached to “write a procedure describing the cover and the new cleaning method.” I knew I had written a procedure on the mill, and I was certain that the procedure must have included a section on cleaning. It did include a section on cleaning, but of course the blade cover was not mentioned (since it did not exist when I first wrote the procedure).

Had I gone forward and written the requested cleaning procedure, the following would have resulted: there would be two descriptions of how to clean the paint mill. One would describe the use of the cover and one would not. In other words, the procedures would contradict one another. And in terms of the site’s Quality Management System, both procedures would have been correct. But one procedure would have left workers exposed to a hazard.

The solution, of course, was to revise the existing procedure to include the new cleaning procedure (remove the old method and include the new). So the procedure was revised from beginning to end (it turned out the mill had been modified and no one thought to update the procedure, so several new features were described), and the new procedure was issued followed by training.

Could I have simply followed directions to write a procedure on the cleaning method? Sure; in fact it would have taken less time. But my mission was not to crank out procedures. It may have been part of my job description, but my mission was to enable the best possible performance (which included making sure the very best way to do something was the only way it was documented).

The establishment of–and adherence to–a definitive list of activities to be written as procedures is essential to ensuring only the relevant aspects of work are described, and described just once.

Until next post, take care, Tim

The goal is to make procedures relevant to the procedure consumer. A procedure is only relevant if the information of the procedure is directly connected to the work that is being performed.

The sentence above is seemingly obvious, but rarely have I seen a set of procedures organized around the actual work performed. This has to be the organization’s first step: to identify what needs to be described in procedures.

Before pen is applied to paper (or keystrokes to a blank Word file), the organization should have a comprehensive list of what the organization (or each department in the organization) does. To anyone involved in Quality Management System certification (ISO, AS, QS, etc.), this is the heart of Clause 4.1 (General Requirements), that organizations “shall determine te processes needed for the quality management system.” In other words, what does the organization do in order to ensure quality?

If a department creates an inventory of the processes, tasks or activities they perform in order to achieve the “right” output and achieve customer satisfaction, they will satisfy the ISO requirement and will have in hand a shopping list of the procedure topics for their department.

In any department, that list will be finite. It may be long, but there is an end to the list. If this list is created, then the department can isolate each activity in terms of task, which will have the benefit of the task being described a single time, as opposed to having it described numerous times, as each issue that arises becomes the focus of a “new” procedure. In Part 4, I illustrate this problem and how a procedure structure prevents several potential headaches.

To make a procedure achieve its intended training outcome, the procedure must first be relevant. That sounds simple enough, but in many environments, the development of procedures came about for any number of reasons that had nothing to do with effective performance.

As my former company’s trainer of root cause analysis techniques (and as a participant on way too many investigations), I can with authority state that one of the most common reasons procedures come into existence is to satisfy a corrective action request after an incident.

Those of you in safety and/or quality have most likely been involved in (or–shudder!–responsible for) identifying “develop a procedure” as a corrective action after something went wrong. In the case of quality issues, especially when a customer is involved, “develop a procedure” is a very common requested corrective action. (And–not surprisingly–“train employees” is the companion corrective action.)

If pressed, most people will realize that “write a procedure” and “train employees” are rarely effective corrective actions. But they are both very easy for everyone to track and provide “objective evidence” that the corrective actions have been completed.

The problem with nearly all procedures born out of corrective actions? They are very narrowly focused: usually, they only deal with the specific action that we want our workers to do differently the next time, to prevent a recurrence of the incident or problem.

I have walked into more than one procedure-development situation where a quick read of the procedure titles suggested that they existed only as stop-gap corrective actions taken after “it was done wrong.”

So, what should drive the topics covered by procedures? How do we make them relevant? That question will be the focus of Part 3 of this series.

In my most recent series, I discussed “What makes an effective procedures writer,” based on a poll at LinkedIn. One of the points I made in the series, and emphatically in the procedure-writing course (which you can still request from me), that effective procedure writing is a product of understanding what a procedure is (or should be) designed to do, and then write to that intent.

My career has primarily been as a trainer, but writing is an integral part of developing training, and at heart I am a writer first. But one thing I have learned in my years is that one cannot define themselves by what they do (task or skill they bring to the organization), but what comprises their mission. My “profession” may have been (alternatively) trainer and technical writer, but my organizational mission is best stated as follows:

To provide the tools and techniques necessary to enable (the organization) to perform every essential task as correctly as possible, as often as possible. Out of that mission comes the notion of what I term “instructional communication.” Instructional communication entails any activity or device that informs the worker on correct performance. Operating procedures are a major element of instructional communication, but far from the only element. But since our focus is on procedures, I will focus on procedures.

As I have stated, in my career I have found only one reason for a procedure to exist: to enable the worker to perform a task correctly. In that sense, it is a training document. To be effective, the procedure must be developed with its training intention in mind.

In the coming posts, I will look at the procedure as a training document, and discuss steps toward procedure development and (most importantly) procedure utilization in training.

If you are a member of the Technical Writer in Action community on LinkedIn, you now understand why I could not tackle the topic of “effective procedure writing” in the comment section.

This is the final installment, and I thank all of you that have followed this discussion. I would love to hear from you, either through LinkedIn, through comments in WordPress, or by emailing me directly at mrprocedure@gmail. com. I read and answer every email (which to date has not been too taxing).

The final attribute of an effective (read, excellent) procedure writer is a firm, solid belief in your ability to be a contributor in your organization. Make a point of learning everything you can about your organization, so that regardless of the writing assignment, you know how it is intended to result in a better organization and will be able to discuss the project in terms of achieving objectives instead of “how many pages do you want?”

Confidence in your ability is essential. But be aware that arrogance is not confidence. There is a substantial difference between projecting a vibe of “I can be an effective contributor and agent of improvement” and “you are so lucky to even have me.”

Know your abilities (raise them as appropriate), know your organization, know your customers, know what defines success…in addition to knowing your writing craft.

As I close, I know I have only scratched the surface of the subject matter. But I hope this discussion serves as an encouragement to those of you performing the essential work of technical and procedure writing. It is incumbent on us to make sure the work continues to be essential. Performed effectively, procedure writing opens a gold mine to the organization, in terms of realizing its objectives (which include financial, of course).

If you have not requested the Procedure Writing course, contact me by any means above (it’s a .pdf file, nothing fancy, but it is free!). God bless you in all ways as you pursue procedure writing excellence.

Tim James, Mr. Procedure–connect with me on LinkedIn.

The basic characteristics of an “effective” procedure writer have been discussed in the previous eight posts. In the final two posts, I am stepping out a little further (on the limb, as it may be). In the wrap-up to this discussion, I want to focus a little on what makes an excellent procedure writer.

Excellence is measured in terms of the degree the procedures enable excellent performance within the organization. When product is created in a timely manner, with no defects, no scrap and no employee injuries, excellence can be measured in real bottom line results (what is termed “return on investment,” or ROI).

Key to achieving excellence is the ability to put yourself in the shoes of the end-user of the document. What do they need to excel in their work? Is there a different, better way to approach the subject matter? Should I really be satisfied that words on paper are really enough to achieve excellence? Or is there more I can do to ensure that the knowledge is effectively transferred?

In my experience as a procedure writer, I have to date come up with exactly one reason for operating procedures to exist (and no, it has nothing to do with placating auditors). The one reason for operating procedures to exist is to educate the process performer. Let me put it another way: there are two customers for the operating procedure: the person who will learn the process, and the person who will teach the process. The effective procedure writer will understand that they are writing just as much to satisfy the trainer (maybe more so), than to satisfy the trainee.

If the purpose of an operating procedure is to facilitate learning (if you know of another reason for procedures to exist, please write me), then the excellent procedure writer comes to each assignment with the heart of  trainer or educator. Does that mean you should be expected to become a stand-up trainer? No, not necessarily, though if you can add that skill, you will be more valuable to your organization. But if you can see the real desired outcome of an operating procedure, and work toward achieving those outcomes, you will provide much greater value to your organization than a “mere technical writer.”

We are discussing the characteristics of effective procedure writers, specifically those that go beyond the basics of the poll question on the Tech Writer group forum.

The second element of the effective procedure writer is the ability to differentiate between types of documents. There are a lot of documents in the workplace that get referred to as “procedures.” In many cases, the “procedure” is not a procedure at all.

Let’s look at an example “procedure:”

1. The receiving department receives, logs in and stores the raw material.

2. The kitting department pulls the materials required for the product, and delivers them to the production department.

3. The production department takes the parts and materials delivered by kitting, and assembles the finished product.

4. The quality department inspects the finished product, and delivers the good products to the shipping department.

5 . The shipping department packages the product, puts it on a pallet and stores it for customer delivery.

In many environments, even ISO-compliant ones, the example above would be considered a “procedure.” And as long as I can provide “objective evidence” that each department is performing the specified actions, I get a smiley-face from the auditor.

But the above is not a procedure. The “procedure” only talks about “who.” By definition, determining “who” does something is the domain of “policy.” Procedures deal with only one dimension of performance, and that is “how.” Does the policy need to be established? Yes, defining responsibility is essential to effective organizational function. But if my job is to do the work, do I need a document to tell me I do that job (and tells me who does the other jobs)? No I do not.

The ability to separate policy information from procedure information is a key to an effective organizational player. If you can do that, you make two camps happy: the “procedure folks” who need to know how to do the work, because they are no longer bogged down with information they don’t need, and the “policy folks” who need to control and optimize organizational function, because they are no longer bogged down with information they don’t need.

And, you will do yourself a great favor as a procedure writer by limiting the procedure document to that which is truly procedural in nature.