The best leaders keep one eye on informal processes
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There’s nothing better than a business process that is simple to understand. There’s also nothing worse than a process that makes little sense.
I’ve seen lots of business processes be ignored because they were too complex, too difficult or just plain asinine.
I once read about an architect who designed a campus with multiple buildings. The story goes that she put down no walkways between the buildings. All she did was plant grass.
6 months later she came back and paved walkways wherever the movement of people had worn out paths. This way she knew the formal pathways would be close to where people actually wanted to walk.
I’ve done some research and realized this is quite a deep rabbit hole. These informal paths are all around us and are called “desire paths”.
As leaders we are often the architects of team structures and the designers of standard operating procedures. This story illustrates that it can be insightful to keep an eye on the informal processes - or paths - that our teams and colleagues create.
The leader who takes the time to understand what happens on the frontlines and trust their teams can then help adapt and evolve the formal structures and processes over time to be more intuitive and efficient.
This leads to simpler processes that will actually be used, which creates a win-win situation because both your company’s effectiveness and staff satisfaction increases. It’s a leadership slam dunk.