I was asked someone the other day to show me their process with regards to something they were doing. They looked at me, tilted their head, and said “not sure what you mean”. I replied, “the steps in which you take to perform that task”. They looked at me again and shyly said “I don’t know … I have been doing this so long; it’s just habit”.
This is when it occurred to me that maybe not EVERYONE has a Process?
By Simple definition: Process or processing typically describes the act of taking something through an established and usually routine set of procedures or steps to convert it from one form to another, such as processing the milk into cheese, or converting computer data from one form to another. A process involves steps and decisions in order to produce a result.
The process that one follows is just as important as the results that are produced by the process.
If a person does not understand the process (or the steps that were taken), then it becomes very difficult to know how a certain set of results were achieved, or how they resulted in a good or bad outcome. Therefore without a process in everything we do; how can we expect the same result?
If a person tried to bake a cake for the first time knowing the ingredients that were in the cake, but not knowing the measurements of the ingredients, or the temperature to bake it at or how long to leave it in the oven … what do you think it would taste like when it was done? And JUST AS IMPORTANTLY would you be able to bake another cake exactly the same?
For LONG TERM success and consistency, it is important that you have a step-by-step process for everything you do. This is the BASIC starting point in any journey. Without a step-by-step guide … how do you know what to change? And when you change something, and it works … how will you be able to repeat it?