Good Process Helps Teams Play Fast

Over the next two days I will be locked away in yet another Board meeting and a strategic planning session for one of our portfolio companies at Shore. It's a huge commitment of time and resources by everyone involved, especially the portfolio company, but it's also a critical part of our process. I'm often asked by colleagues in industry or people new to Shore, why we put so much emphasis on process.

Short answer: To get the best results most often.

Longer answer: No one can guarantee (honestly) outsized returns or exceptional outcomes for any individual business venture. But one can guarantee that, within the realm of what is actually in their control, they will do the things that maximize the likelihood of the best results. To know what those things are, one has to repeatedly test, follow, and iterate on a similar set of activities. That is called process, and we document learnings and continuously improve process at Shore with almost a religious zeal.

Process is a hard thing to get right. Process for the sake of process is just noise. 

Process, done right, makes it easier to follow the best patterns, to more quickly identify deviations, and provides freedom for everyone working within the system to play fast. Process isn't about holding teams back within constraints, but freeing them up to excel at the things that matter most. Great strategy is similar in that regard.

In your business, I encourage you to think about what you have learned that can be institutionalized to make it easier for everyone to succeed. In my experience, it's a significant separator between excellent and just okay (or worse).