Process Nightmares

This article is based on the transcript from the Cafe Grit Podcast, S1E09.

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Have you ever wanted to hurt someone over a job aid?

I did not hurt anyone, let me get that straight right up front.

One time, on another plane of existence in Beth Anne Campbell’s life, I damn near jumped over a desk and choked someone during a process training session.

The process was for some new software the company had implemented to handle help desk tickets.

You know. Technical support. ☎️

Like when you contact the cable company and you tell them you’ve got an error message on your TV and the only way to get rid of it so you can get back to binge-watching Supernatural or The Witcher or Twin-Win on HGTV is to reboot the cable box.

So you tell the support tech guy that you just need a new cable box (because wouldn’t that be the simplest thing to try?). But he says “I’m going to reboot your box” as if you haven’t already tried that 1432 times (and by the way, you just said, that’s the only way we can get the channels to come on).

But you let him do it anyway. Miraculously the error goes away (as it does every time you reboot...for a while).

The next day it happens again. What? For real? Didn't see that coming. So you call tech support again and you get another Einstein who also ignores your request for a new cable box and instead sends a technician out.

Nope, still broke. After a total of three—yes, THREE—truck rolls with no success, they FINALLY concede to giving you a new cable box, which shockingly fixes the error message.

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ALL OF THAT is (in theory) managed in some sort of ticket/support/work management software.

The company I formerly worked for many moons ago (not a cable company, thank you for asking) had a new ticket system for handling our technical support and it needed a job aid.

Those of us who would be using the software needed to know what the process was and how to use the system. If I have a problem or request—like, maybe I need a server set up for a project—what are the steps I take to get this accomplished?

↳ How do I log in or get access (it’s a new system)?

↳ What is the workflow?

↳ Where do I start?

↳ What fields do I need to fill out? Mandatory vs optional?

↳ How do I submit?

↳ How do I know if the ticket was created successfully?

A group was formed to get these questions answered and over some weeks or months they came up with a “job aid.”

(The quotes are deliberate.)

😕 The manual was something like 50 pages long. And it wasn't an easy 50 pages. If I am being honest, it was a bit of a sh*t show. I consider myself a pretty intelligent person, but it was very difficult to follow.

I wasn’t the only one speaking out about this. Everyone was. I had some feedback from some of my team members when it was released, and I think I can sum up their comments in three letters:

WTF?

I even looked over the job aid myself and tried to map out what I thought I was supposed to do in this workflow, but I stopped after a couple of hours. You know what? Life is too short. I had too many other crises to deal with and precious little time to pull out my job aid translation dictionary and decipher the War and Peace document.

Eventually, the team who put the process together scheduled some group training.

Great! That is exactly what we needed (well, other than a more concise job aid, but it was a start).

The training was held in one of our annex buildings in a room with a bunch of seats that were a modern version of the old-school classroom chairs with attached desks. They were not very comfortable (at least, not for those of us with goddess-like hips). The chairs were haphazardly strewn about the big room with little order. I confess that the sh*tty logistics already set me up to be in a crap mood right from the get-go.

The “training” was more or less a presentation of some high-level points that I didn’t find very useful. Toward the end of the session, someone asked a really good question (not me, for a change).

No, this was another person, who was clearly thinking the same thing that everyone else in the room was thinking, and she dared to verbalize it.

“Will there be a checklist?”

🙀 WHAT??? HOW DARE SHE!!!

Someone gasped. A baby started crying and a siren went off somewhere in the distance. Two dogs howled.

👏🏻👏🏽👏🏿 I was secretly clapping. I am always thrilled to have another hand-raiser in the room.

But there was a noticeable drop in temperature as the instructor responded with no small amount of snark.

"Why? What do you need that for?"

Let me pause here. I know that the instructor didn't mean to be dismissive. I’ve worked with her before, she’s a great person. She was probably frustrated too. Someone was challenging her work; I'd get defensive too.

But it did come off a bit snarky and it was the last straw for me. This was the culmination of a long and futile protest against these huge, complicated, and not-very-helpful help documents.

🤬 I had to hold myself back. It was a good thing I was wedged into a 4th grader’s desk chair because I really wanted to jump up and choke the instructor at that moment.

But I did not do that. I have been in trouble before, so I held back from a physical altercation. 👮🏾

Oh, I did respond.

I barked out a few choice reasons why we needed a simple reference sheet. Fifty pages were too much for this process, at least, for the people using it on a daily basis. We needed something that was easy to understand, and the official document was decidedly NOT.

Why WOULDN’T there be a cheat sheet?

Here’s the thing: It is absolutely necessary to have comprehensive documentation on a system or product such as this. It is. But that is wholly different from a User Guide, which should be concise and easy to follow.

It’s like buying a waffle maker. Yes, there is a thorough technical manual somewhere out there and it provides value to someone. I am not that someone. I don’t need to know the innards of my Cuisinart Belgian Waffle Maker—every wire, every gear, every heating element. I don’t know if a waffle maker even has gears, but you get my point. 🧇

The person who assembles the waffle maker might need that 50-page manual. The person fixing the waffle maker might need it.

I don’t need it.

✅ I need to know how to turn the damn thing on.

✅ What temperature do I set it to?

✅ Should the lid be open or closed when it is heating up?

✅ Where do I place the waffle batter?

✅ How will I know it’s done?

✅ What is the best way to clean it?

Boom. Done. Two pages max.

I think this illustrates the frustration I had with the 50-page ticket system job aid. That was a comprehensive manual for the experts. I needed the 2-page checklist for the rookies.

A few weeks later, I needed to create a new support ticket and didn't know how. It was unavoidable: I had to grovel to the process group even though I had recently contemplated murdering their leader.

I was sent to a woman I’ll call “Winona.” Very nice lady. I explained what I was trying to do and asked if there was some sort of guideline or checklist I could refer to. She told me there was.

YES! GLORY HALLELUJAH!

I was over the moon. This was EXACTLY what we needed! Maybe our feedback had been taken seriously!

Or maybe not. Winona sent me the documentation. It was the same presentation that was used in the group training sessions, the one I found not really very useful in a real-life applicable sort of way. 🤦🏻‍♀️

I thought maybe she had misunderstood me, so I went back and clarified my requirements. “I need the guide for doing X,” I explained.

“Oh, no, sorry. We don’t have that yet.”

It shouldn't be so hard. The goal is to make things easier for people so they will do it right. Consistently.

And also, this is basic Change Management. I talked about this a lot in my book Where The Hell Is My Bacon? (which is not a boring book about Change Management; it’s a fun book about bacon that just happens to have some great lessons about how to NOT roll out a change 🤗).

One of the topics I cover in the book is “How the hell are we going to do this?”

So…how the hell do we do this?

🥓 Listen to the people using the product or service. Engage them.

🥓 Make it as easy as possible.

🥓 Don’t make assumptions about anything.

🥓 Split apart different workflows. No one wants to weed through a giant IF THEN ELSE statement or a mindmap to try and figure out where to go next.

🥓 Take feedback and use it to improve the processes.

🥓 Be empathetic.

Nothing is more frustrating than searching in vain for the basic information you need to do something. You will not make any friends or get any brownie points by ignoring your users and making processes too cumbersome to follow. We aren’t putting together Ikea furniture (sorry Ikea…I love ya, but it’s true). 🪑 🛏 🛠

Bringing it home…eventually, someone on my own team (her name is Beth) put together a checklist. I’m not sure if she took the time to weed through the bigger mess or if she just struggled through the actual process enough times to learn it.

Either way, I am forever grateful to the other Beth (actually, she is Beth…I am “the other Beth”). 🙏

For some additional words of wisdom on Process Nightmares from my awesome LinkedIn tribe, here is a post I created on this topic a while back.

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All right Grit Gods, thanks for stopping by!

Don’t forget to follow and check out the Café Grit Podcast for more real conversations about corporate life, careers, the quest for fulfillment, and finding your voice (links below). Please leave a review on the platform of your choice if you think it doesn’t suck! And if you prefer video, go to thebeann on Youtube.

And check out Where The Hell Is My Bacon for the true story of how one stressed-out IT department found their voice through bacon.

That’s all for now, we’ll talk to you soon…and remember: You don’t have to deal with the bullsh*t, and there IS something better out there. Let’s figure it out together.

Take it easy. 👊🏻 👊🏽 👊🏿 ☕️