The Importance of Process and Why It Matters
Embracing Process
For some people, especially creatives, the word process conjures up mental pictures of onerous and creativity-stifling hurdles. These are likely the same people that see household budgeting as a hassle. In both cases, nothing could be further from the truth. Just as budgeting can be the gateway to financial freedom, process must be embraced as a creative enabler.
Re. The Importance of Process
When I titled this article, “The Importance of Process and Why It Matters”, I wasn’t calling out the fact that process is important — it is, of course. Rather, I was referring to the role of process in the context of creative project management.
The WRONG Question
Asking whether one process is better than another, is no more useful than asking what is the best color, or which are more important, hands or feet? Instead, ask yourself the following questions.
The 4 Questions of Process Evaluation
- Is there a process?
- Is it understood by those required to use it?
- Are we using it?
- Is it working?
The flowchart below attempts to visualize this line of thinking...
Following this model, any process that passes these tests is a good process.
More Tenets of Process Design
Additional thoughts to consider…
- A good process is easily learned, repeatable and sustainable.
- A healthy process-design mindset demands a strong preference for less rather more process wherever possible.
- Feedback loops and progress reporting are important to any process. In a perfect world, the act of doing the work should automagically report progress or at least that progress should be self-evident.
Why Process Matters
Have you ever noticed when starting a new job how overwhelming it feels? The experience is sometimes referred to as drinking from a firehose! And as a result of these firehose days, just how physically and mentally fatigued you are by the end of the day?
Believe it or not, this is all related to the lack of routine. And what is the primary driver of routine? Process! When there is a well understood and manageable process in place, our brains don’t have to think too hard about next steps. Good process actually improves creativity and productivity by demanding fewer cycles from the ol’ gray matter. Once you adopt this mindset, you will come to appreciate that going the extra mile to templatize project artifacts for future use and documenting the intended usage will pay ongoing dividends to your business.
Process is Critical to Our Business
As you might imagine, MojoMediaPros has its established processes and methodologies for vetting, designing and implementing digital solutions for our clients. What you might not realize is the effort we invest in finding and on-boarding the best freelance talent into the MojoMediaPros fold.
Every one of our Pros is under NDA and has signed an independent contractor agreement with Mojo. During their on-boarding, we convey policies and expectations around communication, file organization, and brand standards. By handling these on-boarding chores well in advance, MojoMediaPros can assemble enterprise project teams, on-demand, with an uncanny sense of urgency and unity.