It is rare to find something that can serve two purposes while accomplishing a third. The act of discovering process is one of them. The Cambridge Dictionary defines process as: “a series of actions that produce a desired result”.
Discovering process can help us understand something as well as organize something. The third result is less evident but confirms the leverage that discovering process yields. It is one of effectiveness. Of gaining traction with your efforts. Focusing on better seeing and completing the next steps inherent in a process for better reliability and more consistent results.
Many things in life have a natural rhythm to them. Stitching together many little steps leads to something more visible. The way we organize as a group. How we communicate and make decisions. Approach challenges. Becoming a good cook. Building a healthy lifestyle. Understanding the logic behind a new skill or a specific domain of knowledge. Different organizations with different purposes will have different processes that power them. Internally our own thinking goes through steps. Many times it’s all the little experiences we stitch together (much like steps) that form our points of view.
Understanding the processes that create a seemingly unified whole in any area reduces ambiguity, confusion, and uncertainty. It helps us answer the question of why something is being done the way it is, clarifies why specific outcomes might occur, and reveals to us how many things get accomplished. The same holds true for us as individuals. The steps we find in a process may not always yield a positive outcome. Many lead us to negative outcomes that cannot be improved upon without understanding what drives them.
We see what we see, but many times do not understand the why or how behind something. It’s the difference between knowing an answer for a test (not knowing how it was arrived at) versus understanding how to go down a path to find it without first knowing the answer.
Organizing ourselves, a group, a company, a non-profit, an outing, or even building a life involves taking steps in a direction toward an outcome. This is the definition of a process. It takes many steps to accomplish anything. Nothing magically happens. The modern term of “grinding” at your job or your life’s passion confirms this.
Change is a popular yet ambiguous pursuit. Whether individually or organizationally, it makes no difference. The pursuit of change is powerless when you fail to discover the steps in the process currently in place behind something. You can’t change anything until you act like a surgeon to replace a step that is deformed or defective. Sometimes changing more than one is needed.
As we now see, discovering a process behind something can yield a much deeper understanding. This is the first step. Especially when we can explain a process in a simple way as the picture above depicts. This pursuit breaks down when complexity invades it.
Then taking this understanding of an external process to help organize our steps by discovering the internal process we will use to engage in the pursuit of an outcome in an area. Putting these two together, making changes to steps when needed, then repeating the discovered & adjusted processes over and over will give us better and more consistently positive outcomes in a shorter amount of time. Making us more aligned with the world and its inherent processes and rhythm.
Gaining three things by focusing only on one – discovering process, seems like a bargain in today’s time-starved world.