A Short Case Study: Change Leadership meets Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs)

I recently had the opportunity to work with the founder of a medium-sized manufacturing company who sought to establish a set of Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for their company. With studies from an Organizational Change course fresh on my mind, I dove back into the familiar task of documenting processes, but this time through a new lens: a Change Leadership lens. 

As part of the discovery process, the client and I had preliminary discussions to identify the challenges and successes in the current manufacturing operations at their company.

Through these discussions, we identified the next best steps for the project. Clearly, Standard Operating Procedures  were still needed, but it was also clear that we needed to spend some time streamlining and making decisions about their data management process before proceeding. 

Alongside the founder, I got to sit down with the two employees that were most involved in this process to see what worked best for them. Their perspectives provided vital information about how to the design of a new data tracking process, which was then drafted and approved by the founder.

With a well thought-out and agreed-upon process in place, we were ready to put pen to paper on the bigger set of manufacturing SOP documents. Because this document included processes that depended on the data management process (for example, how to process a new sale and where information should be tracked during the manufacturing process), the upfront work was essential. 

Finally, we all made sure to put time and energy into training and communication of new processes to everyone impacted by the change.

I believe that this consulting project will have a lasting impact on internal operations well into the future because we took steps to:

  • Engage the team as part of process development. 
  • Provide clear communication changes through visual diagrams, text (in the form of an SOP), and spoken training.







-Marissa Mosunich

www.operatewell.com

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