In Praise of Process
So much of work life, and increasingly, non-work-life, is focused solely on results, outcomes, and goals. Smart Goals. Big Hairy Goals. As someone who is fairly achievement-oriented, I get it. I’m not here to vilify goals — they are important and necessary. But we’ve lost balance. The laser focus on goals and outcomes often obscures the path that would help you attain them. That path is process.
Process isn’t just a series of to-do’s. When we think of goals, we usually imagine a road or a highway: a linear, direct line from where you are to where you want to go. But I want you to imagine a river. A meandering river. A river that is fed by streams and tributaries. A river that winds around itself and creates wetlands. A river that nourishes life and is healthier for the life it nourishes.
The definition of process is both a series of actions that happen in a certain order or a series of things that just happen — especially in a natural process. So the word process holds both the task-based understanding of the word, but also the more organic and expansive aspect of the word.
Results and goals make you focus on time in such a way that makes any “unproductive’” time seem unnecessary. Yet, the word process comes from the old French proces which means journey. If you attend to process, you will not just attain a goal, you will also have something bigger and more expansive when that goal is achieved. You will have shifted something in yourself. You will have a new way of doing something — not just something done. You (and your team) will have more ability to do something else in the future.
Time is the natural enemy of process. Leaders and teams I have worked with often say they don’t have enough time at their meetings to check in or connect with each other. Or, there’s not enough time to have regular meetings or team retreats. And if there is time for those things, then the time must be focused on the task, and not on how the tasks get done, or how the relationships that support the tasks are holding up.
We live in a world that likes the “three easy steps” frame of mind. We farm in monocultures and oversimplify complexity: why eat an orange when you can just take vitamin C?
But not all problems are the same or have the same structure. According to Sholom Glouberman and Brenda Zimmerman, there are three main kinds of problems: simple, complicated, and complex. For simple or complicated problems, goals are outcomes and the steps to the goal are cause and effect. They can be known or can be hypothesized enough to adjust to. And for those goals, a protocol or stepwise progression may be enough.
But when the problem is complex — when you want to change a culture, coach an employee or student, help your team heal through trauma — the steps aren’t clearly known. Instead you need processes that include how are we going to work together, or how are we going to communicate, or the cadence of attention and devotion to our work that you protect and make time to create, grow, or heal.
Complex outcomes are more similar to the goals of an artist. Yes, a painter has a goal of a finished painting. But the what is not always clear. Instead, the artist has to focus on the process: the dailyness of the work and honor the time — the productive and the seemingly unproductive time — that creation requires.
In a letter to her accountant, the painter Georgia O’Keefe writes, “My studio looks like an attic — it always does when I work — it would undoubtedly distress you — one ten-foot table is full of canvas and stretchers and hammers and tacks — then there is a small table full of little pieces of canvas covered cards painted tones of all the colors I have — every day — or I should say night—I stretch a little canvas. It hurts my hand so I do it a little at a time . . . ”
Most artists and writers seem to have a routine of 3–4 hours of focused work a day — and then take time on whatever rejuvenates them, and come in contact with the world and relationships in such a way that their work is sustained. As the author Willa Cather said, “I don’t hold myself to longer hours; if I did, I wouldn’t gain by it . . . . If I made a chore of it, my enthusiasm would die.”
We think of goal-oriented behavior as something that requires discipline. But process may require even more discipline because the results are often delayed and there is no quick or easy reward. You can listen to or coach a difficult team member for months before change happens. You can sit through difficult conversations with teams before any resolution happens. You can have team members share their information and stories, and still have the tasks that are required to complete the deliverable.
For those of us who have done this work for a long time, we trust the process of process because we have seen it work. The way that a writer knows the first draft will be bad, and the second draft will miss the mark, but somewhere in the writing and rewriting they will find their way to a finished piece that works. We have faith that when people spend time together something bigger happens. We have faith that when groups stay in the conversation long enough, they build the muscles they need to work on bigger problems.
Explore and Practice
How’s your balance of outcome-orientation versus process?
Does your team have a direction? A set of outcomes? Goals?
And, are you attending to process? Is there time for your team to connect? To understand each other’s contexts? To think about how you are doing things? To learn about how others have solved complex problems?
If you shifted your focus from what you wanted to accomplish, to how you wanted to do or enjoy the actions it would take to achieve the goal you wanted to accomplish, what might change? How might you approach your day, routine, or work differently?
Questions for Further Exploration
Process requires patience. Patience that allows for trust and faith in others to grow or heal in their own time. What is your relationship to patience? Who is your role model for patience? If patience isn’t your thing, how might you increase your skill through practice? Mindfulness meditation? Bird Watching? Learning a new sport or a new skill?
Suggested Reading: Daily rituals: How great minds make time, find inspiration, and get to work by Mason Curry.
Sources:
Glouberman, S., and Zimmerman, B. (2002, July). Complicated and Complex Systems: What Would Successful Reform of Medicare look like? Government of Canada Publications.