Workshop · Transformation
The procedure exists and nobody follows it
The team still works from memory, even though the procedure is written, approved and sitting in the shared folder.
- Duration
- 3 hours
- Delivery
- On site · Virtual
- Participants
- From 8 to 25 participants
- Investment
- Request a quote
Investment depends on scope, number of participants and delivery mode. We prepare a proposal at no obligation.
The problem it solves
The procedure is written, approved and saved where everyone can find it, and the team still works from memory. Ask why and the answer is not an objection, it is a shrug. Nobody is against the document. It simply is not part of the work.
The reasons repeat from company to company. It was written by someone who does not do the task, describing a tidy version that never existed. The system changed, or the supplier, or the form, and the document stayed on the previous version. The exception that used to be rare became half the cases and the procedure does not cover it. And above all, nothing happens when it is ignored: the work comes out the same and nobody asks.
The cost lands twice and neither half shows in a report. The company paid to document something it does not use, and each person runs a private version, so the result depends on who is in that day. New hires do not learn from the document, they learn by watching, and they inherit the shortcuts along with the job, including the ones nobody has looked at since they were invented.
What it covers
The workshop takes a live procedure from the company and examines it alongside the people who do the work. What is written gets compared with what happens, and every point where the two part company is marked. The conversation is run without looking for culprits, because the gap is almost never defiance: usually it is a sensible adaptation somebody made on a Tuesday and never recorded.
Classifying those marks is where the session pays off. Some deviations are improvements and belong in the document. Some are shortcuts carrying risk and need correcting. And some parts of the procedure never protected anything and can go. That third category is the most freeing and draws the most resistance, because it means admitting that at some point the company documented for the sake of documenting.
The second half works on the conditions that make a procedure get followed. Format, which decides whether it is consulted or ignored: length, location and the exact moment someone needs it, which is rarely while sitting at a computer. A named owner and a review rhythm, so a change of system or supplier does not quietly make it obsolete. And reinforcement on the floor, which carries more weight than initial training and costs considerably less.
The close is the piece that is almost always missing: light verification and consequence. In a management simulation, participants practise what to look at to know something is being followed without mounting an inspection, and how the conversation goes the first, second and third time someone does not follow it. The consequence gets defined in the room, proportionate and consistent, because a procedure with no consequence is a suggestion in document format.
What participants learn
- Analyse a live procedure with the people who do the work and locate where it parted from practice.
- Compare deviations that are improvements with deviations that are shortcuts carrying risk.
- Evaluate the format of the procedure against the moment and place where someone actually consults it.
- Identify the person who keeps each procedure current and the rhythm at which it is reviewed.
- Design light verification and a proportionate consequence for a breach.
Agenda
- Why a carefully written procedure stops being followed
- Procedures written far from the actual work
- Currency: what happens when the system, the supplier or the team changes
- An owner for each procedure, and a review rhythm
- Format matters: length, location and the moment of use
- Initial training versus reinforcement on the floor
- Light verification: how you know it is being followed
- Breaches: conversation, correction and proportionate consequence
What the organisation leaves with
- One of the company's own procedures revised, with every deviation classified and settled.
- A named owner and a review date for each live procedure.
- A written verification criterion: what to look at to know it is being followed.
- A rule of proportionate consequence, agreed before the next breach rather than during it.
Programme details
- Format
- Workshop
- Also available as
- Intensive workshop · Corporate training day
- Languages
- Español · English
- Includes
- Participant workbook
- Action plan
- Post-training resources
- Facilitation
- ALUD Consulting LLC — Global Business Transformation.
Who it is for
- Operations managers whose manuals go unused.
- Supervisors correcting the same error they already wrote up.
- Owners who paid to document processes and saw little change.
Frequently asked questions
- We have no written procedures yet, is this session for us?
- Not yet. This workshop works on documents that already exist and are not being followed. If the company has not captured its processes, that is a different piece of work and it comes first, otherwise there is nothing here to redesign.
- Do we need to bring our procedures to the workshop?
- Yes, at least one, in the real version sitting in the folder today, with its errors and its old date. The session loses half its value if the group works on a generic example instead of the document the team is ignoring.
- Would closer supervision not solve this?
- Rarely. When a procedure is not followed because it does not match the work, more supervision produces compliance in front of the supervisor and the same practice the moment they look away. The workshop goes after the cause before the monitoring.
- Can we run it with supervisors only?
- You can, and it comes out worse. The people who know the real exceptions are the people doing the work; without them in the room, the review produces a document as tidy and as unreal as the last one.
Request this programme
Tell us the context and we will prepare a proposal tailored to your organisation. No obligation.
Working this inside the organisation
If this challenge will not be settled in one session, ALUD Consulting LLC works it as consulting: management consulting, human resources, strategy, organisational design, leadership development and business transformation.