Comprose

If you haven't read David Allen's personal productivity bestsellers,  Getting Things Done and Making it All Work, we highly recommend them!  In both books, but most recently in Making It All Work, Allen stresses that the simple discipline of asking the question, "What is the next action?" is one of the most powerful and profound steps anyone can take to boost personal and team productivity and "get things done." 

According to Allen,

"The best criteria to determine whether or not you've actually thought something through sufficiently to act upon it is how clearly you can answer these three questions:

• What has to happen first?
• What does doing look like?
• Where does it happen?"

Allen goes on to say:

"Identifying the next action runs neck and neck with defining the desired outcome in terms of generating value in a given situation.  But if I had to choose between those two questions [the one] that would be the most effective in increasing productivity, I'd unhesitatingly pick, 'What's the next action?'

Why? Because I've seen too many people come up with a confident response to what they're trying to achieve, but have the whole effort falter because of a lack of clarity in what, specifically, to do about it."

Making It All Work, p. 174.

The COMPROSE Policy and Procedure Pros have posted before–and we probably will again!–about the importance of focusing on "actions" if your goal is to have your company's procedures manuals, SOPS, and corporate training manuals read and used.

Here are two previous posts, with examples of how focusing on ACTION will drastically improve the usability of your SOPs.

• Top Tip for Writing Easy-to-Follow Step Instructions
• Tip: In Steps Use Powerful Verbs that Show Action

Watch for more tips and techniques that you can use for writing policies and procedures that deliver more value. You might also want to check out our webinar series, particularly our How to Create User-friendly Procedures webinar.  Follow the link to download a data sheet.
 

One of our clients recently discussed problems they had getting their veteran employees to use and follow their company’s standardized procedures and company procedures manual.  As a consequence, errors and inconsistencies were commonplace.

It’s only human nature. If you’ve been doing a job for a long time,  you think “I can do this in my sleep” and you think you don’t need to follow “procedures,” right?  Unfortunately, that’s not always the case.

We know (and the research bears this out)  that relying solely on memory often results in errors or missed steps. If it’s a task you do frequently, having the procedure in front of you may not be necessary. But if it’s a task you don’t do very often, the SOP manual can serve as a critical checklist to prevent errors.

People generally want to do a good job.  More times than not the reason veteran employees resist looking things up lies with the SOPs themselves. The way information is structured and presented–overly complex SOPs, redundancies, disorganization, infrequent updates, etc.–make people resistant to applying the standards.

How you handle this issue depends on the situation, but, bottomline, it’s your responsibility to make sure your company’s SOPs are easy-to-use and accessible.  If you’ve done that and under performers still won’t use the procedures, then it’s your responsibility to make sure they understand the consequences.  An effective strategic management practice is to make it part of an employees’ performance review.

But the FIRST step to preventing any kind of resistance and getting buy-in – from all constituencies in your organization – is to design a policy and procedures system that is user-friendly and that people can trust and rely on.

Through our Operations Mapping approach and Zavanta software, COMPROSE helps our clients design policy and procedure systems employees trust and use. 

For a related topic, check out our video The Best Method for Reducing Workplace Errors  recently posted on our sister blog, Everyone Knows What to do.
 

We’d all like to be able to wave a magic wand and instantly streamline operations to turn our businesses into lean, mean, efficient machines.  Economic pressures and thin margins are causing business owners and managers to step back and re-examine their businesses: Are we operating in the most cost-effective, streamlined way?  Why are we wasting time, spinning our wheels?

With so many processes, people, and jobs, the idea of  building a lean, efficient organization can be overwhelming. Sometimes its easier to break the big job down into smaller chunks. Think about improving organizational performance by making incremental improvements. 

Try starting with just ONE business process.  Re-engineering even a single Standardized procedure can deliver a quick payback.

Here’s a great example:  One of our Zavanta customers, an IT consultant, took a highly complicated, error-prone data conversion procedure that took several days and people to perform and transformed it into a two-hour push-button procedure that anyone on the team could do.

Considering this data conversion task had to be performed every week, it is easy to see how the time savings would accumulate: week over week, month over month.  The annual savings could be the tens of thousands of dollars!

And then there are all the intangible benefits of standardized procedures. Making routine tasks more efficient frees employees up to work on important things such as innovation.  Less frustration; priceless.   Getting the mundane on auto-pilot clears the mind and improves focus. 

So think about your own organization. If you had to identify just one task that is problematic; people are spinning their wheels, lots of errors, what would it be?

To learn more about how you can build accountability into your organization and streamline operations, see the COMPROSE Operations Mapping approach and Zavanta software. 

Recently an Executive coach we’ve been working with commented about how our Operations Mapping method – linking processes to detailed standard operating procedures, work instructions and policies -- is a perfect fit for improving organizational performance, process improvement and re-engineering applications. We agree. Our clients do too.

Yet, some people resist this idea.  

The resistance may be linked to the misconception that standardized procedures are useless paperwork or at best are expensive door stops (if I had a nickel for every time I’ve heard that… )  (“Bad” SOPs do make good doorstops—especially if they are in white binders!)  Thinking about SOPs only in terms of “documenting” and record keeping instead of looking at SOP development as an exercise in examining and understanding how your business works is old-fashioned thinking.

It may also be semantics. We recently worked with a client to develop a "process map" for automating one of their core processes. At the beginning, the client was adamant about not wanting to get into SOPs or procedural "details." They thought they only needed to look at the "Big Picture." However, the high-level process map ended up being very complex because the client kept adding more and more detail as they thought through the processes they needed to make automation decisions.

Surprisingly, it was the discussions about the detailed procedures the client started out not wanting to consider that revealed the fact that some managers had no clue what was really going on! And that was the biggest problem they were facing.
 
Standard operating procedures (SOPs) are often overlooked as a key element of Process improvement (process re-engineering).  Process re-engineering typically needs to go beyond what’s on a high-level process map.  And its not always just about process automation.  "People-based" operations can be improved through re-engineering too.

Mapping out your “as is” processes and SOPs is the first step in any process improvement initiative because it makes your “people operations” visible.  You can’t improve what you can’t see.

To learn more about how you can build accountability in to your organization and streamline operations, see Operations Mapping on the COMPROSE site.
 

We had to laugh out loud at the June 3rd "Dilbert" comic strip. As usual, Scott Adams put his finger on how often strategic management processes that sound so good in the Board room can misfire and become punchlines around the water cooler.

 

Are you actually encouraging your employees and colleagues to act randomly because no one in your organization knows the answer to Wally's question either. Are the terms Core Systems and Key Processes just more examples of baffling management-speak that fail to connect to what people actually DO at work?  

If that's the case—as we see so regularly in all types of organizations—then your company's most sincere efforts at improving organizational performance and standardizing operations may be just plain confusing and counter-productive.

It doesn't matter what words you use to describe your systems. The real key to successfully standardizing operations is making sure everyone in your organization understands what is important and why, who does what, and how to correctly complete their daily tasks. 

That's why the COMPROSE Operations Mapping approach is so different from other approaches. Operations Mapping integrates all levels of operations including detailed tasks. It starts with envisioning the goal and then breaks high-level processes into detailed tasks that roll back up to the top. Business goals are LINKED to the processes, policies, people, and detailed tasks needed to achieve them. Piecemeal approaches only address part of the puzzle.
 
So if you don't want your organization to end up looking like a Dilbert comic strip, take a closer look at a more effective approach.
 

Many have said that by just thinking about how their business “works” and defining the best way of doing things has gone a long way in transforming their organization from a “seat of the pants” culture to one of accountability. 

You have to put it in writing. Capturing and communicating standardized procedures, the right actions, and responsibilities (before the next misstep or security breach happens) is the most effective and fair way to make people accountable and minimize some of the push back you may get as you transform your culture. 

And we’re not talking about throwing a book of gobbledy-gook at people and just saying "See Ya!"   We’re talking about good systems that LINK clearly defined policies and standards to the processes, procedures and work instructions needed to carry them out. 

Good systems are continually refined and perfected with employee input on how to improve them.  Everyone understands how the business works at EVERY level and what their role is. 

As one of our customers tells her staff: If you’ve followed the procedure “you’re off the hook.”

To learn more about how you can build accountability in to your organization and streamline operations, see Operations Mapping.
 

That’s a core principle of Sam Silverstein’s methodology and book: “No More Excuses – The Five Accountabilities for Personal and Organizational Growth.”  “We are accountable to do the right things consistently.” Sam goes on to explain: “The problem is many managers are great at the strategic level but don’t define the right things that need to be done weekly, daily.” 

As we mentioned in our previous post, we run into this all of the time in organizations we work with.  Accountability starts at the top but has to trickle down to all levels.  As Sam points out, the pathway to accountability is giving people responsibility and authority.  So exactly HOW do you do that?

Well, the answer is yet another incentive for taking the time to develop good systems -- writing clear policies and standard operating procedures (SOPs).

Accountability is based on being clear about what you expect and giving employees a road map (defining the right actions) for how to achieve the expected result, repeatedly, consistently.  Its not fair to expect someone to always do the right thing if they don’t know what the right thing is.  Figuring it out on their own is not a strategy. Telling them once may not “stick.”

Micro-managing each and every person that comes and goes isn’t effective and you don’t have time.  The way to build a culture of accountability is through good systems and procedures.  Sam Silverstein talks about this in another YouTube video:  Create Procedures and Systems for Streamlined Growth

To learn more about how you can build accountability into your organization and streamline operations, see the COMPROSE Operations Mapping approach and Zavanta software. 
 

The concept of "accountability" is certainly getting a lot of press right now-- the oil spill crisis in the Gulf of Mexico, the financial crisis, lax border security. Someone has to be “held accountable.”  

What about your organization?  Is yours a “culture of accountability?”  If not, why not? In the next several blog posts we’ll point you to expert advice on the topic as well as share some success strategies we’ve heard about from our customers.

Fostering accountability has to be one of the biggest organization challenges out there. For 20+ years we’ve heard comments like these from managers frustrated with how to get their employees to be accountable. “Why don’t my employees know what to do without me always telling them?" “Why don’t they ‘get it’?”  Well, in many situations it's management that doesn’t “get it”.

When it comes to creating a culture of accountability, the difficulty may start with peoples’ perception of accountability. Something bad happens, someone steps up and says “I take full responsibility, I’m sorry.”  Okay… then what? It's not about placing blame and saying "Sorry." Organizations who truly understand accountability, strive to avoid this scene entirely by intentionally standardizing operations and promoting a culture that could prevent misstep from happening in the first place! 

Sam Silverstein, an internationally renowned business speaker and thought leader on accountability, provides insights that we think really hit home on an organizational as well as personal level. Sam gives an overview during his appearance on Donny Deutsch’s “The Big Idea.” 

Check it out.

To learn a proven approach you can use to build accountability into your organization and streamline operations, see COMPROSE's Operations Mapping.  
 
Watch for more posts on this topic.

The article "Why Your Training Is So Ineffective?"  from the Quality Insider Newsletter caught our attention because it raises a crucial issue in corporate training and new employee orientation, namely Return On Training Investment.  Here's the key question the article raises: 

"We’ve all done it: You need to learn something so you sign up for training. You attend a class. You go back to work. Does anything from the training class stay with you a week later? How about a month or six months later? Usually you feel good after training. You remember some of the content. You have some new ideas. But as time passes, the experience fades and you are back where you started. Is this a good return on your time and investment?"

No matter how engaging or informative a "live" training course might be in the moment, what happens when the people trained go back to their offices?  Do they remember what they learned? Can they apply it correctly?  Can you measure training return through improved results? fewer errors?

This challenge is the reason why having written standardized procedures and work instructions available to employees 24/7 is such an important aspect of leveraging training expenses and maximizing return. 

A clear, easy to understand operations manual provides an essential reference and  training tool. Employees can read and review key policies and procedures both before and after face-to-face orientation and training. When they get back to the job, they don't have to rely on their memories or whatever notes they jotted down. What makes so many corporate training programs ineffective has nothing to do with what happened in class and everything to do with whether or not there is a knowledge support system available after the fact!

COMPROSE Zavanta software makes it easy for your organization to have  essential operations policies and procedures securely available 24/7 to your staff from any location--even home!

For a related post see: Study Shows Most Employees Waste up to 40% of their Training
 

If you want an example of how much clear written policies and procedures matter in the real world, just look at the current crisis in the banking sector. Everyone from shareholders, cable talk show hosts, to Congress wants to know what standardized procedures,  management practices and safeguards were in place, and who was responsible for what.

Ultimately, it is the bank's Board of Directors and Management Executives that are accountable for whatever happens in their bank. The board of directors has very specific oversight duties and responsibilities. The directors should always know how the bank is being run and "once a policy is in place, it is the board of directors' responsibility to ensure that both management and staff are following the directives that they have." Board of Director Duties & Responsibilities

Because of the board's role, it is standard practice to have a bank's board read, review, and approve all the bank's written operating policies.  But, the Good Business Systems Squad here at COMPROSE have been hearing from a variety of sources in banking, including customers and regulators,  that "Board Approved" doesn't always mean what it sounds like. In many cases, the policy and procedure material given to the board to review is so convoluted, overly complicated, and downright confusing that board members don't actually read it--and, even when they do, they rarely understand it. Often, the board just rubber stamps the P&P documents which then go on a shelf and never get used. As a result, there isn't much actual oversight and it is virtually impossible to ensure that correct standard operating policies are being followed throughout the bank's operation.

In fact, some managers intentionally bombard their Boards with tons of pages of policy and procedure documents to review because it avoids their own accountability. If asked about an inefficient or questionable policy or process, a manager can simply say, "the Board approved it" and he or she is off the hook.

It may be--in no small part--that because of the high volume and poor quality of written policy and procedures being passed to them, Bank Boards cannot perform the oversight they should and, therefore, the safeguards that were meant to be in place are failing.

An oversimplification?  Of course! Bad P&Ps alone didn't cause the current banking crisis. But it is one problem that can EASILY be corrected and which can help correct many other problems in bank operations as well.

It's no secret that increased regulation and oversight of banking is on the way. Clear, accurate and understandable policies, procedures and operations manuals will be key at every level of the bank's organization--starting with the Board of Directors.

For more related posts, see:

5 Tips for Ensuring a Flexible Policy and Procedure System in Banking

Bank Regulators Caution About Boilerplate Policies and Manuals

Are Your Policies and Procedures Flexible Enough to Handle Exceptions?
 

Many companies have heated internal debates on this question: "Are our written policies and procedures good or bad? "  How do you know?

Some people measure quality based on whether P&Ps exist and are physically accessible to staff, whether they are grammatically correct, or how they look. Criticisms range from “Our P&Ps are too long”  “We don’t have enough pictures” "We need differnt fonts." “Playscript format is best” “No, a flowchart is the answer." "We don’t need details." "We need much more detail.” and on and on.  

When it comes judging to the quality of your policy and procedures manuals, it’s all a matter of opinion, right? Wrong! In this post, we show you how to tell OBJECTIVELY if your corporate policies and procedures are “good” or not. 

The definitive test is how you answer this questions: Are we getting the PERFORMANCE results we want?    

The term “Performance results” is a little broad, so we’ve broken it down into 7 specific areas relating to operations and training.  If you answer YES to just one question, your standard operating procedures are either missing in action or need fixing  and you are not getting the return you should for the time, money, and effort you’re spending on writing policies and procedures. 
 
Diagnosis Checklist

1. Training Difficulties:  Does it take too long to get new employees productive?  Do supervisors spend too much time answering the same questions?  Is training inconsistent?  (How are you training your people?)
    
2. Inefficiencies, Slowness:  Does it take too long to: Perform routine tasks?  Open new locations?  Take a business concept and “franchise” it?  Implement major changes?  Roll-out new systems?  Launch new products?
    
3. Errors, Waste (Quality Control):  Are people making too many errors?  Do you have difficulty controlling the quality of service, products without a lot of labor and oversight.
    
4. Knowledge Retention: Are there areas where you would be at significant risk or project failure if your STAR performer or consultant left today?  Are best practices in peoples’ heads?  Are your “experts” overwhelmed by people constantly asking them for help?
    
5. Inconsistency / One-offs:  Are work processes inconsistent?  Is there a significant variance in how one person performs a job vs. another person?  Do people often re-invent the wheel?
    
6. Fire-fighting:  Are managers spending too much time fighting fires, dealing with mundane issues, instead of mentoring employees and focusing on innovation? 
    
7. Regulatory Compliance / Liability Risk:  Are there areas of exposure?  High risks? Are Board Members signing off on policies they aren’t reading and don’t fully understand?  

Any one of these issues by itself is serious. The financial impact could be costing you tens of thousands of dollars (or could possibly even you out of business). 

A “good” P&P system is the most efficient and least costly way to alleviate these problems, so if you still have them, whatever you’re doing (or not doing) isn’t working.  Here’s the bottom line. 

If people are USING your corporate policy and procedure manuals and achieving the expected  results with minimal supervision, then you get an A+.  If you have operations, quality, and training costs under control and down to a science, then whatever you are doing is working. If you have a systematic and sustainable way to transfer the best practices of your star performers then BRAVO.

That’s the true test of whether P&Ps are GOOD or not. Nothing else really matters.  

Through our Operations Mapping approach and Zavanta software, COMPROSE helps our clients design their policy and procedure systems that meet this test.  Check out the new video The Best Method for Reducing Workplace Errors  recently posted on our sister blog, Everyone Knows What to do. 
 

Streamlining operations, improving organizational performance, and standardized procedures are 3 critical and interlocking components of success in every organization. But as we have talked about in many posts, the real key is getting good people and good systems to work together.  If the wheels on your car are out of alignment, you are in for a bumpy ride and might even end up in a ditch. It's the same thing if your people and your systems are out of alignment.

In his book, Less: Accomplishing More by Doing Less, Marc Lesser makes the point well:

"ORGANIZATIONAL ALIGNMENT: Organizations are in alignment when each person on the team or in the organization understands the larger mission and how his or her actions are connected to it. Organizations are out of alignment when individuals don’t fully understand and embrace the mission, goals, and objectives and don’t see how their particular activity influences and contributes to the organization."

The Company Procedures Manual delivers many benefits, but not enough people recognize its power as a strategic management process. Writing policies and procedures down and sharing standard best practices serves to align your organization. Not only does everyone know what to do, everyone knows why they are doing it.

As you are doing your strategic organization planning, take a look at the alignment between people and systems. If it's not in sync, developing and sharing clear standard operating procedures is the fastest way to get the wheels realigned.

By writing policies and procedures that clearly explain your unique business system you can guarantee that your employees understand their roles and responsibilities and are working on the right tasks. This is the very core of COMPROSE's Operations Mapping approach and Zavanta software.

For more perspective on this topic see these previous posts:

• There is a Place for Common Sense in Standardizing Operations
• Writing Policies and Procedures Started as a Way to Prevent Train wrecks
• Standardizing Operations by Systemizing Business Processes - Good Systems & Good People

Tech Republic.com is a great resource for all subjects IT and technical trends. But there’s a lot there too that touches business management best practices.  Recently we found an interesting post in their IT Leadership blog that explains the value of writing policies and procedures and SOPS for CIOs and IT management. 

In the post “Mastering the Mundane with SOPs that fit”  author Padilla Ramon repeats a quote familiar to most of us:

“The best run organizations are those which have mastered the mundane.”

He talks about why in IT  SOPs are essential as well as the benefits. But what got my attention was this:

“It never ceases to amaze [me] how organizations can take a desire to implement best practices and SOPs and completely miss the boat on what they are doing and why they are doing it. The SOPs ARE NOT the end product, nor are they designed to be so rigid as to make conducting business painful.”

He goes on to say:

“I have witnessed the logistical operations of UPS and Fed Ex, and I can tell you that these organizations have truly mastered the mundane. Their cargo-handling capability is literally a science and they have achieved mastery not just by creating SOPs and sticking to them, but by constantly re-examining their processes to make them more efficient, effective, and consistent.”

Mr. Ramon echoes our thoughts but does it from an IT perspective, in particular when implementing a strategic management process and quality improvement methodology such as ITIL and COBIT :

“Looking strictly at IT, it is important to remember that your organization is unique and that plopping in a best practice without considering the individual quirks of your environment is usually a bad idea."

Ramon goes on to say that "Mastering the mundane" is accomplished by writing policies and procedures that "insure a quality output on a consistent basis." You gain flexibility and agility by "constantly examining your procedures to insure that your operations are purring like a kitten.”

Good advice, no matter what department you’re living in.

Through our Operations Mapping approach and Zavanta software, COMPROSE helps our clients design their policy and procedure systems with this flexibility in mind. 

Check out the new video The Best Method for Reducing Workplace Errors  recently posted on our sister blog, Everyone Knows What to do.
 

A recent article in Quality Digest:“Thinking and Adapting in the Context of Standardized Work” by Mark Graban  raises a common myth we often hear: written standard operating procedures (SOPs) are too constraining and "robotic."

In his article Graban rebuts this myth pointing out that “Standardized work isn’t “mindless conformity.”

He further reminds us that Bill Marriott had written the same thing in regard to his hotel chain. 

Here at COMPROSE we can’t count the number of times we’ve heard people say:  “We don’t need systems or written operating procedures; we pride ourselves in that fact that our employees have freedom in how they their jobs.”  (in other words, SOPs are confining, impede freedom).  However, these same organizations were struggling with serious errors, inefficiencies and miscommunications because of a lack of standard systems.

Recalling one such conversation still leaves us a little unsettled. It came from a manager of a healthcare organization that was experiencing severe, sometimes life-threatening errors and a high number of complaints.  Yet, any mention of creating "structure" and operating standards was met with resistance.  

As with anything, you can go overboard.  You certainly don’t want to hamstring people. In his article Graban sites an interesting example of a situation where using your “brain” and common sense thinking is required!!

SOP best practice incorporates common sense. If you build the “right structure” you can free people up and give them the confidence to make the right decisions. 

The operative phrase is “right structure.”

Once you get the mundane and routine handled, out of the way and “systemized”,  everyone will FINALLY get to innovating and improving processes. 

The implication for organizations wanting to improve organizational performance and reduce errors is clear. As simple as it may seem, the most effective technique is to streamline systems and procedures. Corporate training methods and common strategic management processes, such as reward versus reprimand, did not achieve the anywhere near the positive results that simply defining a clear, efficient standard operating procedure did.

For more on the impact of the cost of workplace errors and the importance of streamlining your business systems, see Are Your Operations Headaches Costing More Than You Know? on the COMPROSE website.  


 

Training employees and keeping them compliant with regulations is a big challenge. Just about every business is interested in improving organizational performance and with the increased regulations coming down the pike, it is only going to get more difficult to achieve compliance. As we shared in an earlier post, we have been spending time lately talking informally to bank regulators to get their insights on the role policies and procedures play in “keeping the bank out of trouble” and how companies can get a handle on this before the next regulatory tsunami hits. 

What we learned was that the regulators want to see proof that the Bank has thought through all their corporate policies and set guidelines, directions, and exceptions that pertain to their unique situation. One of the biggest challenges is figuring out a system for dealing with all the complex exceptions and conditions involved in daily operations. (This comes up in other industries too. Can you say insurance claims processing?!)

One of the regulators we spoke with drove the point home by sharing a story of a problem he experienced as a Compliance Officer in a multi-location bank.  The audience served by one location was very different than the customers served at another location. This presented many challenges; handling Customer Identification was one. The bank had no formal, written guidelines. Everyone just did what they thought was best which put the bank at risk and caused a lot of employee frustration and upset customers. 

As this regulator put it: “Employees – especially those on the front line – have to know what to do in every weird situation. They need to know what to do when they are outside of the normal stuff.”

“Outside the normal stuff” can vary from bank to bank or even by location. A branch serving Population A may have different issues than a branch location that serves Population B with completely different demographics. So, when writing policies and procedures for your bank you need a system that is  flexible and designed with these exceptions built in.

Through our Operations Mapping approach and Zavanta software, COMPROSE helps our clients design their policy and procedure systems with this flexibility in mind. In the next post, we share 5 specific tips for making sure your content delivers value and is useful. 
 

In our ongoing efforts to research and pass along current trends, we recently met informally with several Federal Bank Regulators to get their thoughts on the good, bad, and ugly regarding policies and procedures in banking and how P&Ps affect bank examinations and standardizing operations in bank branches.  Their insights and stories were enlightening.  We’ll be sharing some of what we learned here and in related posts. 

Even if you’re outside of the banking industry, much of their insight is applicable and just makes good business sense!

Current regulators are not as concerned with the “exact” format for writing policies and procedures or any strict mindset regarding P&Ps. From their perspective, a policy and procedure manual exists first and foremost to ensure that employees know what to do. That's their primary concern. P&P manuals should clearly explain how to handle the various specific situations that come up in actual operations.  Having written policies and procedures that clearly outline “the directions we want employees to take” is the best way of doing that. For example, if your bank is launching a new product, the regulators want to see that you have policies and procedures in place beforehand so that everyone knows who does what, when to complete tasks, and what the exceptions are.

More than one regulator commented that many banks don’t do a very good job of this.  Many buy "pre-written" handbooks or templates but just put them on the shelf thinking that is good enough. They fail to customize their policies and procedures for their own situation, and don't apply them.  As one regulator told us: “A dead giveaway is when the bank pulls out a policy they bought somewhere and didn’t even bother to change the name in it.” 

Besides the obvious “lack of time” excuse, we asked the regulators why they thought so many banks miss the mark here. We’ll share some of their feedback in later posts along with some possible solutions.  So stay tuned.
 

• Acceptable Internet Usage - Policy
• Building a Jeep Wrangler - Process
• Month End Closing (Finance & Accounting Department) - Procedure
• Printing a Report - Work Instruction
• Installing a Printer Driver - Work Instruction
• Filling Customer Orders  - Process
• Credit Terms and Collection Guidelines - Policy