John Cutler provides an examination of what makes a Good Process vs. Bad Process1:
| Good | Bad |
|---|---|
| Encourages mindfulness | Encourages Mindlessness |
| Flexible to local concerns | Inflexible to local concerns |
| Adaptable and improved | Set in stone, âjust becauseâ |
| âPulledâ because its valuable | Pushed onto participants |
| The underlying principles are understood | Foced adherence |
| Encourages conversation and collaboration | Reduces quality and quantity of discussion |
| Co created with participants | Designed in a vacuum and imposed |
| Value to all participants | One-sided value |
| Increases confidence in outcomes | Detached from outcomes |
| Distilled to core âjobâ | Tries to serve many jobs/concerns |
| Achieves consistency with minimal impact on resilency. Improves global outcomes | Achieves outcomes to the detriment of global outcomes / long-term resilience |
| Delivers value to end-customers | Disconnected from customer value |
| Guide/tool/navigate/remind | Control and direct |
| Enhances trust and saftey | Trusty proxy, safety proxy |
What emerges here is that a good process is collaborative, light-weight and desired. It seeks to improve the global outcomes and deliver customer value. One understands how a âbadâ process comes to be: âwe need to control this outcome, or at least look like we are trying to control this outcome so we are going to do this mandatory trainingâ. The process designer is seeking to solve their immediate problem (or more likely they were handed this project and are just trying to complete it) rather than solve for the greater good of the organization.
1. Cutler, J. Post on Good vs. Bad Process. https://www.linkedin.com/posts/johnpcutler_how-do-you-tell-the-difference-between-good-activity-7281164091182759937-GwrS/ (2025).