(The Seventh in the Series-I of ‘The 7 Mavens of SOPs’)
By Dinesh P. Bhrushundi @ dbknowledgey
A great Hello from ᵭᵱᵬ’the मितवा’ ! ‘ᵭᵱᵬ’ is my initial and ‘मितवा’, a Marathi acronym for Friend, Philosopher and Guide, my humble role to ‘Sit Back and Give Back’, after 4 decades of career-cruise.
Series Title: ‘7 Mavens of SOPs’ is expression for instilling some of my learnings as “seven propositions in sets of seven SOPs (norms)”, befitting the human mental capacity and attention span.
The seventh version, ‘7 Sections Of Procedure’, is the improvised learning from association with a Japanese firm, midway my career. It is still quite relevant as one of the structured thinking tools for devising a procedure or process. The original 3R sheet, entailing: Route-Rule-Role, was later manifested as 7R for 7Sections Of Procedure. Please refer the pyramid below:
R1-The Route: The procedure or process is a logical array of meaningful activities and tasks. ‘Route’ thus denotes the relationship between the activities, it basically is the flow of activities. It is important to know the two ends of the array or the flow: the ‘Start’ and ‘Stop’. Once that is done, the activities can be connected with each other, mostly progressively, sometimes parallelly, between these ends. Precise Route is foundation for tidy Procedure.
R2-The Rule: The step of a procedure at times may need a pattern or a direction for performing an activity associated with the step. ‘Rule’ is about specifying this very instruction of ‘how’ an activity should be performed, it can be a parameter, proportion, periodicity or similar. The section of Rule is essential to regulate a procedure or process.
R3-The Role: The third important section is about briefly describing everything required to be done to begin, carry out and finish a particular activity or in other words the ‘Role’ to be performed at that step before moving to next step. The ‘Role’ is core to successful completion of the activity associated with such step that needs detail description of what all is necessary for accomplishing the step.
R4-The Responsibility: Central to all others, ’Responsibility’ section is vital in identifying and outlining the ownership of task, step or activity or for that matter, the entire procedure or process, so also the other six ‘Sections Of Procedure’. Fixing the ‘Who’ part is very important lest the grey area emerges, expands and make an activity, land in ‘no man’s land’ rendering the very purpose of process or procedure pointless.
R5-The Report: The section of ‘Rule’ often stipulates two things- the milestones and the measures. Milestones monitor the output at predefined steps and measures manage the overall performance of process/procedure. It is mandated that the results of these two are tracked, again as stipulated by the ‘Rule’, through a structured ‘Report’, reaching it to right ‘Responsibility’ soliciting ‘reaction’ for (any) variance analysis and make up plan.
R6-The Review: The variance analysis and make up plan, the health check of the implementation of procedure and its examination for the continued applicability vis-a-vis the changes in the environment, need to be scrutinized through a robust ‘Review’ mechanism again as per the set out ‘Rule’. The rigor of review is trigger for the effectiveness and efficiency of the procedure/process.
R7-The Record: Last but not the least, it addresses two fundamental aspects. One of course serves as the proof of having implemented, monitored the procedure/ process and evaluated its recency and relevance. If the ‘Record’ methodology is properly designed, indexed and archived it can significantly contribute to knowledge management efforts as well.
One can devise a suitable, comprehensive format for 7Rs and section-wise checklist to enhance the utility of this structured thinking tool. These 7Rs representing 7Sections Of Procedure can be found handy in the Project situations as well.
I am delighted to handover the Seventh release in the Series-I of ‘The 7 Mavens of SOPs’. I am sure all the articles were thought-stimulating and action-generating for you. I will continue to meet you all through the Series-II of ‘The 7 Mavens of SOPs’,
Bestest!
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