Processes, procedures, work instructions – What is their purpose?

In this article we identify the different types of document in your procedure manual and explain their purpose and their relationship with each other.

Using our Shakespeare play analogy we can see the answer.

Document	Business	Shakespeare play
Process	Business area, for example, Financial Management. Example	A act, containing several scenes
Procedure	A set of interacting activities by a number of roles that achieves a particular goal, for example, Manage Accounts Payable. Example	A scene in the play, where a number of roles advance some part of the plot
Work Instruction	A detailed set of steps that one role has to carry out as part of an activity in a procedure	A long speech by a role in the play
Information document	A set of information, explanations or rules that helps team members carry out the procedure	The location of the scene, props required, their positions, rules for the roles to follow, such as costume or mood

Who wants to read these documents?

If you want to understand how the business works, look at the processes and then read the procedures.

Your team members will occasionally look at the procedure but normally go straight to the work instructions and information, where they can find out what they need to do.

Your table of contents

We sometimes find clients who have a great set of work instructions, but they have trouble working out how to organise them. The Shakespeare play analogy shows you a structure that is organic to your business. Organise it in 3 layers:

Level 1	The acts (business areas)
Level 2 within level 1	The scenes (procedures, describing who communicates with whom)
Level 3 within level 2	The speeches and scene requirements (work instructions and information)

Navigation

With the table of contents as described you have an organic, logical navigation that someone who understands business can follow.

To support this we add:

Launch pads—pages with handy links for different types of team member
Full text search, so that anyone can find any word
Glossary, to help people use the same words

Help

Like some help creating this for your business? Contact us!

Don’t let ISO 9001 dictate your table of contents!

In this article we explain why it is better to organise your procedure manual so that it suits your team, not so that it suits your auditor.

Just because you are getting ISO9001 certification does not mean that the table of contents of your procedures manual has to follow the clauses of ISO9001. Your procedures manual needs a table of contents that fits your business.

Don’t spoon-feed the auditor

Don’t worry about the auditors. They don’t need to be spoon-fed your ISO 9001 compliance. Your procedures manual is for your team, not for the auditor! The auditor knows ISO9001 back to front and can easily assess whether your procedures manual is compliant.

Hierarchy or process?

You can think of your business as a hierarchy or as a process. Which is better to dominate your procedures manual? Since procedures are action, then the process view is surely better. isn’t it?

The play analogy

If you take the process view, you can think of your business like a play. The play has a script. It is divided into acts and scenes. Think of each act as a different area of your business. There is the Sales act, the Marketing act, the Human Resources Management act and so on.

Each act has a number of scenes. In the Sales act, there is the scene where people close a sale, another where they have a meeting to review sales performance and another where they deal with customer follow up, feedback and issues.

In a scene, which we like to call a Procedure, the team members involved have different Roles and communicate with each other to achieve the purpose of the scene. We call what each Role does an Activity.

In our opinion, the best and most organic table of contents for a procedures manual is the acts and scenes (business areas and procedures) that make up the business.

Now there may be a lot involved in a procedure. In the play analogy, it could be that a Role has a particularly long speech to make. Instead of including the whole speech in the scene, we include it as a support document. We call this a Work Instruction.

So a play has acts, scenes and speeches, and your business has business areas, procedures and work instructions.

We can help you think through the acts, scenes and speeches of your business and guide you through creating your procedures manual, whether or not you are going for ISO 9001 certification.

We help to make management easy. Contact us.