Episode 829 - Fixing Broken Processes

0:00You already know how AI is changing how everyday work gets done, how much ground you can cover, and how fast a team can scale. To stay ahead, you need the tools to give you a competitive advantage, built for this new era. Welcome to a Gentech Revenue. Adio is the CRM for this world. It meets you where you work. Compounds every customer signal into context, then acts on it across your pipeline to let you move it on match speed and scale. With agents and animations for every job in Revenue, Adio orchestrates your work around the clock, built to handle the scale of your workloads, extensible with API, and MCP, and with the infrastructure to keep up with your most ambitious agents. Loved by high growth startups like Granola, Modal, and Edget, Adio runs the work behind every win. That's Adio, the agent to CRM, the intelligent system that never sleeps. Picks up leads at 2 a.m. Catches renewals before they slip, hands you the answer before you ask. Try Adio free at adio.com slash iHeart. That's adio.com slash iHeart.

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2:08Hello, everyone and welcome to the 7 Minute Leadership Podcast. It's episode 829. Today we're talking about something every organization has broken processes and I'm not talking about the obvious disasters where everybody knows something is wrong. I'm talking about the process that technically exists but nobody really follows anymore. The policy that's still sitting in a manual somewhere but quietly disappeared from daily operations. The checklist everybody used five years ago and people until people slowly stopped using it. The meeting that used to solve problems then became inconsistent and eventually vanished. How about the handoff procedure that once worked perfectly until somebody skipped part of it. Somebody else copied them and eventually the shortcut became the new process. That's how a lot of organizational systems die. They don't usually die during some dramatic meeting where everyone agrees we're never doing this again.

3:14They just fade away. One exception becomes two. Two becomes normal and eventually a new employee shows up and has no idea the original process ever existed. Then one day something goes wrong and somebody says wait a minute, weren't we supposed to have a procedure for this? Yes, you did. You stopped using it and that's an important distinction for leaders because sometimes we don't need a new process. We need to bring an old one back to life. I think leaders have become obsessed with creating new things, new policies, new software, new workflows, new committees, new forms. Sometimes the answer is sitting in a binder collecting dust. Before you create another process, ask a better question, what were we supposed to be doing in the first place? That's where I would start. If something isn't working in your organization, go back and look at the original expectation. Maybe the process itself is outdated and needs rebuilt.

4:15Maybe the process is perfectly fine and execution disappeared. Those are two completely different leadership problems. If the process is bad, fix the process. If the process is good and people stop following it, fix the execution. Leaders waste a lot of time rewriting perfectly good policies because they don't want to address the uncomfortable reality that nobody is enforcing them. That's not process improvement. That's avoidance. If you're a organization has a start of the day checklist, people are supposed to inspect equipment, review important information, communicate outstanding issues, and make sure the operation is ready. It worked for years and then people started getting comfortable. Someone skipped the checklist because they were busy. Nothing bad happened. They skipped it again. Other people noticed. Soon everyone developed their own version of the morning routine. Six months later, something gets missed. The leadership responses often.

5:19We need a better checklist. Maybe you don't. Maybe you need people to use the one you already have. This is where leaders need to perform what I call a process autopsy. Take the broken process apart. Ask when it stopped working. Ask why people stopped following it. Ask whether the people responsible for it even know what the expectation is anymore. Then look for the exact point where reality separated from policy. You might discover something interesting. The process wasn't broken. Leadership attention moved somewhere else. And employees are very good at noticing where leadership attention goes. If you stop asking something, checking it, measuring it, discussing it, or holding people accountable for it, your team eventually receives the message. This apparently isn't important anymore. You never had to announce it. Your behavior announced it for you.

6:19That's why bringing an old process back requires more than sending an email saying effective immediately. We're going back to the policy. That rarely works. People read the email. They nod their heads. And within two weeks they're doing exactly what they were doing before. If you're bringing something back, relaunch it. Explain why it existed. Explain why it matters today. Show people what good execution looks like. Then leadership has to stay involved long enough for the process to become normal again. And here's something leaders frequently underestimate. You may encounter resistance because the shortcut has become comfortable. Someone is going to say we've been doing it this way for years. That sentence should immediately get your attention because we've been doing it this way doesn't automatically mean the current method is correct. If you ask another question, is the current method better?

7:22If it is great, update the official process to reflect reality. That's leadership too. Policy shouldn't become museum exhibits. If your people develop a safer, faster, cleaner way to accomplish the same objective, capture that improvement and make it official. If the unofficial method is sloppy and consistent, risky or dependent on who happens to be working that day, you've got a problem. Consistency matters. Your customer shouldn't receive a different experience depending on which employee answers the phone. Your operation shouldn't have different safety standards depending on which supervisors working. Critical information shouldn't be communicated beautifully on Monday and disappear on Thursday. A good process reduces unnecessary variation. It gives people a reliable way to execute. And here's the leadership part. Don't repair 10 broken processes at once. You'll overwhelm everyone.

8:25Find the one that's causing the most pain. Maybe it's scheduling. Maybe it's customer complaints. Shift change, purchasing. Employee on boarding. Maybe it's communication between departments. Pick one. Map out what actually happens today. Not what the policy says happens. Not what management thinks happens. What actually happens. Follow the process from beginning to end. Watch it. Talk to the people doing the work. You'll probably find extra steps nobody can explain. You'll find duplicate work. You'll find approvals that aren't necessary anymore. And sometimes you'll discover a critical step that disappeared years ago because everyone assumes somebody else was doing it. That's dangerous stuff. Then rebuild the process around reality. Make ownership clear. Who starts it? Who completes it? Who verifies it? What happens when it isn't completed? If nobody owns the process eventually, nobody owns the outcome.

9:27And once you fix it, document it in a way people will actually use nobody wants a 17 page procedure for something that should fit on one page. Give people clear instructions. Make the process easy to find. Train people on it. Then inspect it because what leaders inspect tends to survive. What leaders ignore tends to drift. And this applies to those old policies that quietly faded away too. If you find an old policy that still makes sense, don't quietly slide it back into operations and assume everyone remembers it. Treat it like a relaunch. Tell people we used to do this somewhere along the way we got away from it. We're bringing it back because it solves a problem that we're experiencing today. There's nothing embarrassing about that. Organizations drift, teams drift, leaders drift, good leadership recognizes the drift and corrects course.

10:29Sometimes progress means building something new. Sometimes progress means remembering something that already worked. So this week, I want you to find one broken process inside of your organization and follow it from beginning to end. And before you create something new, look backward. There may already be a policy, a checklist, a procedure or standard that solved that problem years ago. Your organization didn't now grow it. It forgot it. Bring it back, make it relevant and lead the return to the standard. This has been the seven minute leadership podcast and I thank you for listening. For more Paul Fala Valito podcasts, visit PaulFalivalito.com. You already know how AI is changing how everyday work gets done, how much ground you can cover and how fast a team can scale.

11:33To stay ahead, you need the tools to give you a competitive advantage built for this new era. Welcome to a Genteg Revenue. Adio is the CRM for this world. It meets you where you work. Compounds every customer signal into context, then acts on it across your pipeline to let you move it on match speed and scale. With agents and animations for every job in Revenue, Adio orchestrates your work around the clock, built to handle the scale of your workloads, extensible with API, and MCP, and with the infrastructure to keep up with your most ambitious agents. Loved by high growth startups like granola, modal and etched, Adio runs the work behind every win. That's Adio, the agent to CRM, the intelligent system that never sleeps, picks up leads at 2 a.m. Catchers renewals before they slip. Hands you the answer before you ask. Try Adio free at adio.com slash ihard. That's adio.com slash ihard. With LPL Financial, we provide the services to help push you forward. When it comes to your finances, your business, your future, the only question should be.

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