Want to ruin your day and find out how convoluted your work processes really are?
Teach someone to do your job.
Training my replacement (as I transition into my new role) has definitely been an eye-opening experience. Procedures and processes that I’ve taken for granted have to be picked apart and distilled into step-by-step instructions.
Some of these steps have left me scratching my head and wondering why we’re doing it this way in the first place.
But it’s a good thing.
We can get stuck doing the same things the same way because they “work” and it’s only when we try to explain what we do to someone else that we see room for improvement.
Even if you’re not actively training someone new, take a stab at it and see if your processes make sense. You may find something interesting you didn’t see before.
Wandering.