Let me be clear
Procedural or process steps are the third layer to dig through as you are looking for bedrock. This is where you take each task and work with subject matter experts to document the flow of step to step. You may be capturing this as an ordered list or as a workflow depending on your style. You will likely also want to capture decision points, handling errors, and methods to cancel the process if needed.
As you write these steps, it’s critical you are clear to a point where someone can just read it and go perform the task. It’s more challenging than you may think at first. You are writing these steps talking to an expert and seeing the steps unfold in front of you. You write the step and you think there is no way someone can misunderstand what your intentions are.
But they can. More than you may think.
There are a couple of exercises we perform in our workshops to help people understand how easily things can be misunderstood. You may have done these in other communication training courses or workshops. In one exercise, we ask people to take about 10 minutes and write down the steps, in order, someone would follow to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. We will then ask for volunteers to read us the steps they wrote as we attempt to follow them up front with a cutting board, bread, peanut butter, jelly, and a knife.
Easy enough right?
Wrong!
They typically start off with telling us to lay out the bread. We immediately take the whole loaf and we lay it on the preparation area. Laughter ensues and we continue to take their steps as literal as possible. It’s fun but there is a key point. You can never assume the state of mind or the context people will have as they read your process steps. What you write will always be clear in your own head. You can’t misunderstand your own steps. Someone else can. We HIGHLY recommend you partner with someone to write and edit the process steps. Put yourself in the shoes of one of your learners. Pretend this is the first time you are doing these steps and look for ways you could misunderstand or do something incorrectly. Take notes and edit and refine the steps until you feel they are as clear as they can be.