Processes are not made to handle the base cases.
They are made to handle exceptions that may derail the organization.
You only write the base cases to highlight the limit between normal and exceptional.
You won’t test the quality and resilience of your process until you have a problem:
- If an employee leaves for 3 months due to an unforeseen event, is all the information available for anyone to pick it up and follow the process?
- How fast can you turnaround in case of a major shift in the market?
- How fast can you make changes within the organization that will stick?
- How much are your dependant from a person, a supplier, a client, or a partner?
A good process will help you deal with exceptions easily, and smoothly.
And it will help you shift paradigms very swiftly.
Airplane pilots do not train on conditions that including sunny / non windy weather, with all equipment functioning. They train on the exceptions. They keep checklists to identify deviations with the normal conditions. They limit the possibility for exceptions to appear.
If your base case is heavy, it is unlikely that you will be able to allocate any time for a change.
Change and improvement should be the base case of the process.
