The attitude towards regulatory and methodological documents (RMD) in any Company is always ambivalent — contradictory, simultaneously positive and negative. The ambiguity of working with RMD can be expressed using the example of radical stereotypical positions — 1) “it is unclear who does what, there is chaos and disorder everywhere, everything should be spelled out in regulations and fined”, or 2) “they are stifling initiative, everything is regulated, bureaucracy has been created, we are wasting time in vain…” The most interesting (for observation) is the 3rd option — many good regulations have been developed, the idea of regular management is verbally supported by the 1st person, the rules are fixed in the regulations, but the 1st person of the Company positions itself “above the system”. The consequence? The rules in the regulations do not work, and each time a personal impulse from the 1st person is needed. The 4th option — regulations as an integral part of the Company’s knowledge management system — we are not considering it yet, since it is “top-notch” for many Companies.
Option 1 of the situation, when there is a desire to write everything down, often gives rise to “Frankenstein” – an unviable mass of rules and regulations. Option 2 puts an end to the development of regulations, initiates a revision of what has been done, option 3 is dangerous because it gives rise to indifference. Indifference to the entire system of regulatory documents. Imitation is the oldest learning mechanism, and we all in the Company copy the behavior style of the first person – “He bypasses the rules? We want to be successful like him. We will act the same way.”
Let’s consider how to “revive Frankenstein” in a more or less normal situation, when the Company has an adequate attitude to the systemic approach, there is an understanding of the basics of regular management… Let’s talk about the system of regulatory documents of any company as a system of useful knowledge, let’s make a little lemonade out of lemon)
I consider the company’s regulatory and methodological documents as the basis of the company’s knowledge management system on the 1st hand, and as a set of rules, standards of the management system/regular management system, on the 2nd hand. In essence, NMD is a set of rules of regular management of a specific Company. If the right employees do the right things in the right ways in the Company, i.e., including competent methods to form and maintain competent regulatory and methodological documents in an up-to-date state, then this will allow to consolidate (inherit, accumulate) useful experience in the company, and to form its small and large “Know-how”, and to some extent become a “self-learning organization”. Ideally, NMD should be absent, everything is in the employees’ heads, and all workplaces are configured in IT applications so that they already contain all the rules and requirements.
What is the worst enemy of system solutions when building a system of NMD (normative and methodological documents) of the Company? There are many “enemies”, I will dwell on one of the most widespread examples. These are orders for the company, when they “put out the fire” and replace the regulations, where processes or functional areas (marketing, production, procurement, etc.) are fully disclosed, contain a separate fragment of the process. Later, the order is replaced by another order, and the complete picture of the process is not recorded anywhere.
The Company’s TQM system can and should be approached from the standpoint of process management , quality management system (TQM). The process approach to management is the basic platform, based on which only correct regulatory documents of the Company can be created. To develop correct TQM in the company, it is useful to learn the process approach to management. To build a TQM system, it is necessary to solve a number of quite clear and specific tasks. Based on practice, my vision of these tasks is as follows:
1. Determine the general structure and composition of the company’s NMD.
2. Define your approach to developing NMD.
3. Determine the methods of “reviving Frankenstein” (the Company’s NMD system).
Next, I will reveal the proposed vision in a little more detail and in order.
1. Determine the structure and composition of the company’s system of regulatory and methodological documents.
Why do I highlight this task as important? It often happens that employees do not have a clear picture in their heads of how to differentiate between the Company’s regulatory documents, there are no clear criteria, a zoo of different-sized, incoherent regulatory documents is generated, and as a result, unnecessary disputes at meetings (since everyone has a different picture of the universe in their heads), duplication of the same content in different documents, substitution of one regulation with a dozen orders, contradictions between regulations, jumps from the concept level to the operations level in one document and other “mind-blowing” troubles…
Formation of a system of regulatory documents based on the Company’s process map is a common expert task for a business analyst, and in most cases, this task is of little interest to the CEO. To solve this problem, ideally, one should “dance” from the strategy and target business model, armed with an arsenal of certain methods. But, whatever the strategy and business model, in any case, it is useful to distinguish, in my opinion, three levels of NMD: 1) the level of the management system, functional management subsystems that influence the company as a whole (a universal example: a budgeting system that determines the structure of the CFO, etc., i.e. not a process), 2) the level of end-to-end business processes that determine horizontal interactions between divisions (universal examples: sales process, budgeting process), 3) the level of organizational divisions of the company – regulations on divisions (example: regulations on the commercial department).
In practice, it is necessary to develop regulations when the Company has not yet formed a picture of all processes, or its own traditions have already been historically so established, “grown” into the brains of employees, everyone has gotten used to what is, that it is difficult to change anything. It is necessary to bring order to the regulations under different conditions. To begin with, it is necessary to delimit all non-monetary activities by 3 levels and control so that there is no mixing of “genres”. The non-monetary activities system can be more complex than three levels, but often 3 levels are enough. In practice, it is useful to formulate a regulation on the non-monetary activities management system, to maintain a general register of all non-monetary activities of the company. Also, within the framework of this task, the issue of classifiers of company documents is resolved (important when implementing an EDMS, an electronic document management system). The connection of the non-monetary activities system with the KPI management system is built in each type of regulatory document, only at its own level, its corresponding KPIs are reflected.
2. Approach to developing regulations.
Why is it important to decide on an approach to working with the Company’s processes? Because key interactions of the Company’s employees are implemented through processes, and because the Company’s processes either give the expected result or do not…) It is necessary to understand that success in the market can only be reproduced through a well-established process, otherwise we will have a unique miracle, “magic managers”. In my opinion, any Company process can be worked out in the necessary and sufficient way using 3 tools: a graphical process visualization diagram, a tabular text description of the process, a responsibility matrix for process documents.
Fig. 1. Graphic description of a business process in the simplest notation – “pool lanes”.
Tool #1 is a graphical process diagram. In practice, the most understandable notation for everyone is the “procedure” or “pool lane” notation. This notation is quite sufficient to clearly show the branches and parallel work of the process in relation to departments. An example of a sales process in this notation is in Figure 1. For 2nd and 3rd level processes, this notation is an ideal option. At the level of the entire company, it is certainly more convenient to use the IDEF0 notation.
Fig. 2. Tabular description of the process.
Tool #2 is a simple text table description of the process. Not all business users and “ordinary” employees understand the graphical notation, the text in the table is most often understandable to everyone. Important details and standard deadlines for the process steps appear in the table description of the process. An example of a table description is in Fig. 2. But in this case, parallel work is not clear, it is difficult to see everything from above, on one page (for greater clarity, 1 tool is used).
Fig. 3. Matrix of responsibility for process documents.
Tool #3 — reflection of document flow by process through the role matrix of responsibility “Positions x Process documents x Roles”. An example of the matrix of responsibility for process documents is shown in Fig. 3. Positions only for employees, participants in the process. Examples of roles — performer/co-performer, expert, coordinator, approver, familiarizer — the most necessary roles, you can reduce the number of co-performers. These three tools are quite sufficient to work through the end-to-end processes of the Company without fanaticism and perfectionism, and these processes were understandable to department heads and ordinary employees.
3. Measures to “revive” the Company’s NMD.
Examples of “revitalization” of process regulations may include a number of technologies and tools: a certain approach to working with regulations as a knowledge system of the Company, as a component in working with personnel (during regular certifications, knowledge of regulations is checked, familiarity with the NMD system during the adaptation of new employees, as an example), tests for employees on knowledge of the process regulations, audit of the process for its compliance with the developed NMD, updating of NMD, modeling sessions on process optimization, use of special formats for visualization of regulations, regular assessments of the quality of NMD, and, of course, automation of processes, implementation of an EDMS (electronic document management system).
Fig. 4. Example of a test of employees’ knowledge of the process regulations (fragment).
Developing a test for employees to check their knowledge of process regulations is a simple and useful tool for “revitalizing” process regulations. Tests are not difficult to make, and their effectiveness is guaranteed if they are regularly and correctly applied for personnel certification, as a requirement for knowledge of an IT application that automates a process, or as a record of the initial/final level of knowledge before/after organizing targeted employee training. Of course, it is important to invite analysts, experts in processes and management systems who have experience, expertise, and contact with reality/common sense to solve problems related to the Company’s NMD system. An example of a test fragment is shown in Fig. 4. The presented example of a test is, of course, useful, but clearly not enough to really revive the NMD system as a system of actively used knowledge in the Company. It is important to understand that the problems solved within an organizational unit, a strategic development unit, should not be “encapsulated” only within the framework of these units. It seems obvious, but it is not always achievable. In my opinion, the head of these departments should build special cooperation with two departments in the Company – 1) this is the information technology department (IT department/department), 2) the personnel management department (HR department/department). The quality of cooperation with these departments determines the effectiveness and efficiency of the department performing the functions of organizational development.
