Processes, uncertainty, performance: three words that are used constantly, rarely together, and almost never with precision. Yet their relationship is at the heart of what distinguishes an organization that masters its activity from one that improvises. Because a process is not just a tool for standardization—it is the way in which an organization gradually transforms novelty into something manageable. Understanding this mechanism changes the way we manage an organization, diagnose its weaknesses, and evaluate what really works—and why.
“What is a process?” When I ask this question in my seminars, I am always struck by how difficult it is for participants, who are experienced managers, to answer. Process is one of those terms that everyone in management uses on a daily basis without knowing how to define it. Yet this question goes beyond mere semantic or academic curiosity. The answer can be summed up in five words: A process is formalized knowledge.
A formalized response to a challenge
Originally, an organization is created to respond to a particular challenge: to provide a product or service, solve a social problem, promote a cause, etc. The response to this challenge is the organization’s raison d’être. Its creation is based on a series of assumptions, i.e., reasonable beliefs: it believes that a particular product or service must be provided to a particular customer or user, in a particular way and at a particular price. These assumptions constitute its initial model. When it is launched, some of these assumptions will be verified, others will be invalidated, and the model will be adapted accordingly. Over time, problems emerge and solutions are tried out; we keep what works and formalize it more or less explicitly. Formalization is achieved through the creation of processes.
Imagine that I retrain as a pizza chef. My first pizzas are laborious, uncertain, imperfect. Then I improve. I find my recipe, I improve my technique, I develop my methods. After making a certain number of pizzas, production becomes fluid and reliable (or else I retrain for something else). I have created a process.
A process is therefore a sum of formalized knowledge that allows a problem to be solved or a task to be accomplished in a standardized way. A process describes how to make a pizza, how to admit a patient to a hospital, how to make a particular decision, etc.
More generally, processes reflect an organization’s beliefs about what works and what doesn’t, and how to do what it needs to do to fulfill its purpose. At first, these are explicit assumptions, but those that are verified gradually become largely implicit beliefs. We know how to do something, but less and less why we have to do it that way. This transition from the explicit and experimental to the implicit and automatic is the key to performance. If an organization still improvises where it should have processes, it pays the price of uncertainty—in energy, quality, and time.
Processes and uncertainty
Processes define the areas where the organization has gained certainty. The first pizza was pure uncertainty; the hundredth is the product of a mastered method. The process accomplishes an essential transformation: it converts uncertainty into risk. The distinction is important. The risk remains—a breakdown, a supply shortage—but it is identifiable and manageable. Uncertainty, on the other hand, is removed: we know what to do, how to do it, and we understand why it works. The models around “making a pizza” are identified.
This definition of the process as a formalized response to a challenge has three important implications. The first is that it allows for repetition, and with it, efficiency. It is therefore the key to performance.
The second is that it allows for the transmission of the knowledge created: this prevents each new employee from reinventing what has already been solved. This is what makes scaling up possible—going from one operator to ten, then a thousand, without any loss of quality or consistency. The third is that this response is necessarily creative. Solving a new problem requires inventing a solution, even if it is inspired by what already exists. In this respect, a process is a form of innovation. The fourth is that this response is specific to the organization that produced it. It reflects its particular way of acting, its constraints, and its history. There is a close link between processes and organizational identity: processes are the product of an identity, and they reinforce it in return. This is why a generic process imported from outside rarely works well. A process cannot be grafted onto an organization like a standard part onto a machine.
A continuous cycle
An organization’s activity is thus divided between two categories: situations involving risk, which can be managed using proven methods, and those involving uncertainty, which require a response to be developed. Mapping these two areas is a necessary groundwork task.
This mapping is not set in stone. Areas of uncertainty are gradually mastered and shift into the risk category thanks to new processes. At the same time, new uncertainties emerge—a competitor, an opportunity, a disruption, a regulation—and shift areas that were previously mastered into uncertainty. Obsolescence has the same effect.
The life of an organization is therefore a continuous cycle between the unknown and formalization. Its performance depends on its ability to manage this cycle: identifying new areas of uncertainty and gradually transforming them into operational processes. The challenge is therefore not to oppose process and uncertainty. It is to understand the link between them and manage it methodically and creatively.
🇫🇷 A version in French of this article is available here.
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