Don’t get eaten alive by the approval process
When my sister, Lynn Wylie, met Richard Dreyfus on a cruise, she asked the actor the obvious question, “What was it like to work with a mechanical shark?”
Almost every day, Dreyfus said, he’d arrive on the set of “Jaws” to hear this message over the intercom:
“Ladies and gentlemen, the shark is down. The shark is not working today.”
Can you imagine how frustrating it would be to show up day in, day out, ready to do the job you were hired to do, but not be able to get your work done because some system is broken?
Friends, I’ve got news for you. If you work in most organizations:
“Ladies and gentlemen, the approval process is down. The approval process is not working today.”
In most organizations, the approval process is so broken that virtually anyone in the organization can override the professional communicator’s plans for the message. Which means that in most organizations, the amateurs are in charge of messaging.
So how can you fix your broken approval process?
Here are three ways to create an approval process that works, from initial submission to final approval: