Procedures – ElPropósito3 min de lectura

Strategies that always pay off

We miss many chances to make good decisions when we’re unaware of the strategies we use every day that consistently deliver good results. In project management, one of the professions I love and am passionate about, a vital process many project managers forget is capturing lessons learned, and doing it continuously throughout a project’s life. Lessons learned are the ongoing feedback through which the team gathers all kinds of insights, and by the end of the project they become a valuable asset for future ones. Doing it continuously also lets us make decisions in real time. Back to strategies: a strategy has cause and effect, and every time we use it we see results. The big problem is that we don’t harvest them, or we don’t notice. We don’t realize how many times we use the same strategy.

In aviation, procedures are vital. However routine they are, they’re always followed to the letter so we take the same steps every time, whether starting the engines, taking off or landing. One of the biggest threats to procedures is a lack of discipline, and in aviation that has caused several accidents, even many. Procedures are a series of routines we can easily follow to the letter if we want the results we expect, and, just as in the cockpit, they help us take off and land in life. Many goals lack rigor in how they’re set, and even more in how they’re executed. In that rigor we often skip a simple question: how aligned is what I want to do or achieve with my life purpose? Or with our company’s purpose?

The best companies have procedures they follow to the letter, and they rarely skip them or make exceptions. In project approval, for instance, there are one or at most two windows a year to give a go or no-go to many initiatives. Even the best proposals, if submitted outside those windows, are either dropped or approved in the next cycle. A procedure like this is ultimately a strategy for success, because every time it’s applied (the cause) it produces benefits that couldn’t be harvested if projects were approved at any time. Of course, many organizations also have the liquidity to run many initiatives at once while approving more. Their big challenge is that sooner or later they need to deliver a return on each investment.

Procedures can always be improved, and over time they have to adapt without losing their essence and the quality that defines them. Many procedures on many aircraft have stayed the same for years. They change little or not at all because they’ve reached their purest form and guarantee the safety of passengers and aircraft alike. We need to be aware of our own procedures and of the discipline to carry them out. Physical exercise is a great procedure. In the end, the discipline to do it becomes a habit, and every time athletes repeat their routine they reap a benefit, so their discipline and the way they execute their routines are their best strategies. We refine our best strategies little by little. The first big step is to identify them, and the next is to recognize the benefits we get every time we put them into practice.

How are your procedures and strategies working for you?

Warm regards and all the best,

Rodrigo Baccaro

Author: Rodrigo Baccaro

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