If Your Process Could Talk, What Would it Say?

By Jena Armstrong

If the process you work with every day could talk, what would it say? Maybe it would sound a little tired, maybe a little confused, or maybe it would have a lot to say, and no one has been listening.

Most of our processes don’t announce when they’re struggling. Instead, they show it in small, familiar ways: workarounds, extra emails, repeated questions, delays, or that moment when someone says, “That’s just how we have always done it.” Over time, those signs start to feel normal, even when they’re slowing us down.

If your process could speak, it might say things like:

None of that means the process is broken or that someone did something wrong. Most processes were created with good intentions. The problem is that times change without processes being fully revisited; this is where continuous improvement comes in. One of the simplest continuous improvement practices is learning to listen to our processes. That doesn’t mean assigning blame or jumping straight to solutions. It means paying attention to where people feel stuck, where work slows down, and where frustration shows up repeatedly.

Listening might look like asking a few basic questions:

When we take time to listen, we often discover that improvement doesn’t require a complete redesign. Sometimes it’s about clarifying expectations, removing unnecessary steps, or aligning on a shared way of doing the work. Small changes can make a process easier to understand, easier to follow, and easier to sustain.

So the next time a task feels harder than it should, pause and ask: If this process could talk, what would it say? Chances are, it’s already been trying to tell you something.