If your goals are ambitious and crazy enough, even failure will be a pretty good achievement.
Laszlo Bock – Author

FOW process rules are guidelines, tips and tools that can lead to success. Thomas Davenport,

The author of Thinking for a Living, said:

“To treat something as a process is to impose a formal structure on it – to identify its beginning, end, and intermediate steps, to clarify who the customer is for it, to measure it, to take stock of how well it is currently being performed, and ultimately to improve it.”(1)

Story: When I started working, I thought most work rules were defined in policies, procedures, and work instructions. Was I wrong? In reality, these manuals were often used as a doorstop. Work often consists of process, functional, and implicit rules:

• Process rules are how work gets done in a company. These rules outline the flow of work, resources, ideas, monies, and other mission critical assets. These rules are often horizontal cutting across vertical silos.

• Functional rules are the rules of the work silos in the organization. These rules can be functional, service, or location based. For example, engineering, accounting, and finance are each a silo with its own work rules.

• Implicit rules are the unwritten or informal rules of work. They can be as commonsensical as demonstrating good etiquette and politeness at work. The list of implicit rules is vast and unknowable unless shared. These rules can change from employer to employer and from function to function even within an organization.

Work Lesson Earned: COVID has disrupted work and process rules. It’s important for you to understand the disruption specifics of the new normal in your business, career and job.

Discover the underlying processes to your work, career, and job. For example, FOW has new, mushy and ambiguous productivity and safety rules:

“A productivity system is a set of methods, habits, and routines that enable you to be most effective in knowing what to do and in actually doing it. An effective system involves identifying, deploying, and relying on appropriate tools. When functioning together, these tools enable you to operate smoothly and efficiently, dedicating appropriate time and attention to the most important tasks.”

Thinking for a Living: How to Get Better Performance and Results From Knowledge Workers, Thomas H. Davenport, 2005.