The Case of the Missing IF

[magazine]
Volume-Issue: 
2005-08
Article Summary: 

Grandma cooked her roast a certain way, and now you're repeating the process without knowing why you have to trim the ends off an uncooked roast even though the pan is adequately sized. Relic processes in many organzations fall trap to this mindset since the reason behind the action lost its meaning long ago. Lee Copeland calls these "IF ..., THEN ..." processes. When the organization loses sight of the IF responsible for the action, then you're left with what Lee describes as "a process without a context; a rule without a reason."