Does Process Management Hinder Creativity?

Often, when I talk about process management and explain the benefits of having clear processes with detailed work instructions, I’ll get pushback to the effect ‘we hire professionals to do a job, we don’t want to tell them exactly how to do it’.

In short, the push back is on how much detail the process needs, the concern being we run the risk of turning competent professionals into robots and in doing so killing their creativity.

Process v. Creativity

So, does process kill creativity? Potentially yes. This is something that we need to consider and, depending on the process, find our own balance between giving our staff discretion to bring their own flavour and personality to the way that they work on the one hand, and following standard and best practises on the other.

As a real example, at SA Partners we are forging ahead with Digital Transformation and cross-training our global consulting team to deliver these new services. As we expand, I’m asking myself how much guidance should I provide? When documenting our delivery processes, I could include scripts and recordings of how I would run a session, but doing so means that we run the risk of consultants mechanically running sessions which is not engaging or effective. But we could go too far in the other direction too, the methodologies that I use have been polished over the years by myself and my predecessors with a focus on delivering the most impact to clients in the shortest amount of time – why would we not want our wider consulting team to benefit from these years of experience?

How to make the decision

Lets take an example:

This process has been kept very high level. The process requires the Director of Legal to review and approve the contract, which has been shown, but further details have not been provided on what this review involves and what good looks like.

In this case, the argument can be made that as the Director of Legal, this person will have sufficient experience to complete a contract review using their professional discretion, and further details are not required.

Compare that approach with a small tweak as follows:

In this example, attached to Activity 3 task a, a work instruction has been attached explaining exactly how the contract needs to be assessed.

There are a few benefits of this approach, specifically:

• Because we are leaving less to professional discretion we are able to reduce risk by formalising exactly how the process is performed
• By making this process somewhat more mechanical we may be able to reassign the review from an experienced Director to an early stage Associate and reduce the cost of the process while maintaining quality
• By formalising what good looks like, it will be easier to explain to the Sales Executive what is required for the contract to be approved, and thus reduce rework

In making this decision, its no one size fits all approach. If this organisation works on a few highly complex seven-figure contracts at any given time, it may be impossible to codify what a review involves and require a highly experienced legal practitioner to use their decades of experience to perform an analysis. Conversely, if this organisation is more transactional, reviewing hundreds of low-value standardised contracts, and relying on expensive, experienced legal practitioners will make the process untenable. As a result, tightly defining how it’s run, and allowing it to be run with cheaper resources, is more appropriate.

To summarise, your decision should include a number of factors including:

• How complicated is the process? Is there a significant variance between cycles?
• Is there a risk if the processes are not performed in a defined way?
• Is creativity or standardisation more important for this process?
• Is there a requirement (e.g. regulation) that the process must be performed by someone with certain credentials and/ or experience?
• Is there a cost pressure on this process for it to be tenable?

Personally, I eer on the side of having too much detail. When mapping our internal processes I will likely include recordings, instructor guides, and talking points. That way, if a consultant in Australia needs urgent support while I’m fast asleep, they’ll be able to easily go into our single source of truth (Nintex Process Manager) and self-serve. However, I’ll pair this with a culture that encourages consultants to use their own judgment to deviate from the guidance where they feel it’s appropriate and, in doing so, hopefully, achieve the best of both worlds.

Ishan Sellahewa

Digital  Transformation Business Manager 

Ishan.Sellahewa@sapartners.com