Lisa Gonzalez is no stranger to the world of entrepreneurship. Lisa grew up in an entrepreneurial family in California and supported them in their many business operations. With a wealth of entrepreneurial experience since then and as co-author of the book Process! we hosted Lisa on the Chaos to Clarity show to talk about the 3 mindsets that prevent process, and ultimately success.
“There are tools such as Whale that help implement process in a simple and practical way. When we were writing the book, we realized there was one piece that’s often missing in the discussion about process, is the importance of getting the right mindset around process. Because if you don’t get your head around it, then it’ll never get completed or you’ll keep stalling on it and won’t commit to getting it done.”
Mindsets that prevent process - “Process is not in my nature.”
Lisa, why do you say this isn’t true?
It’s just not true because when you’ve started an organization or, or maybe you’ve taken over a department, the reality is you’ve found ways to do things right. You just kept on doing those over and over. Whether it was that you made a customer smile or found the perfect way to package sales, you decided I’m going to do more of that.
Maybe you didn’t write it down as an entrepreneur, but you captured what worked best in the organization. And then, you shared it with other people. That’s exactly what process is. That’s just called being naturally process oriented.
As humans in general, we are naturally process-oriented. When we realized how to capture fire, we kept and shared that knowledge with other people. Today we know how to do that in more complex ways, but the survival of the human race depended on us being process oriented.
Maybe you haven’t put it into a manual, but the reality is that if we want to grow as organizations and get consistent results, you can’t do it without process. Process is a given because it’s in our nature. It’s just that you have to capture it and document it.
We’re not talking about a 500-page document! In a standard operating procedure, it can be very high level.
So that’s the first myth that we really help our teams understand; Process is in your nature. It’s just, that you’re so good at it. You don’t realize that you are naturally process-oriented.
Mindsets that prevent process - “Process takes too much time.”
Lisa, why is time such a challenge for entrepreneurs?
I think beyond visionaries, everyone just thinks process takes too much time. Entrepreneurs are phenomenal at getting a lot done in a little bit of time with little; little time, maybe little money, and little resources.
Why I’m so passionate about this work, is because there’s a cost to it. If you don’t take care of your health or your home life, you just burn yourself out.
There’s a quote by coach John Wooden, who is UCLA’s most celebrated and victorious basketball coach, that says
If you don’t have time to do it, When will you have time to do it over?
He would spend time really helping his teams before they even went out on the court to put their socks on correctly and tie their shoes correctly so they wouldn’t get blisters. So they wouldn’t lose time.
That’s the same mindset that we teach our entrepreneurs and our leaders to have, and why we emphasis getting process done.
Entrepreneurs have 2 challenges.
Firstly we underestimate how much time we spend just doing stuff over and recouping lost goodwill and redoing the same activities.
Then secondly, we also overestimate the amount, the amount of time it takes to invest in capturing your processes.
This is why we emphasize an 80-20 approach; capture 20% of the major steps that’ll get you 80% of the way there.
“It’s going to take too much time!”
We hear this a lot!
We just don’t know if it’s gonna fit our schedule, we have so much on our plate and we’re so busy already.
If they would actually work on this, it would alleviate a lot of the issues that they have.
Mindsets that prevent process - “Process destroys freedom.”
Lisa, what is the dynamic between freedom and process?
Entrepreneurs, by their nature, are individualists. They often started their company cause they did not want to report to anybody I’ve even had clients in training say, “if you are going to turn my team into a bunch of robots, we’re not doing this.”
That is absolutely not what we’re talking about here. Freedom is actually destroyed by your lack of process; because you don’t know how someone carried out their actions or because you have to micromanage your people.
Isadore Sharp, the founder of the exceptional Four Seasons Hotel once said;
If you systemize the predictable, you can humanize the exceptional.
Because hotels like the Four Seasons and The Hilton have outstanding onboarding processes in place, when someone joins on their first day, everything is set in motion to help make them feel part of the team and ready to deliver excellence.
For the first day team members are made to feel special with a bottle of wine that says welcome to the company team.
When you have your processes in place, that’s the type of freedom you have to innovate and create.
By taking care of repeatable actions people can start to think of ways to bring additional value the company.
We hear a lot as well in, in the creative industry. They’re afraid that process will stifle creativity. But it’s the opposite!
By having the repeatable in place, people are free to explore their creativity and to innovate.
Why you need the book Process!
The book Process! officially releases on the 27th of September. We were privileged to chat to Lisa on the podcast and to get a sneak preview of the book.
Here are 3 reasons why you need the book Process!
- The 3-part ‘process’ to the book that resembles what it takes to get process done!
- The practical questions in part 3 that are designed to help readers apply process in their organizations
- The resources and templates section at the end of the book (including the mention of Whale
) that are designed to help make process practical and get it done!
Get Whale, get Process!
Sign up for a personalized first-time demo with Whale and receive a complimentary copy of Process!
