It is sad and absolutely gut-wrenching how much this word has been abused, dragged through the mud and battered by our politicians and media personalities. Civil servants hide behind this clause as an excuse to circumvent laws and policies, cheat the system, dodge the necessary work to be done, ask for bribe, you name it. It is all blamed on the clause “Due Process”. With every government initiative there is a public outcry that “due process” was not followed. So what really is due process and does this phrase really connote what our power-hungry statesmen and women suggest it does?
Due process is a course of formal proceedings (as legal proceedings) carried out regularly and in accordance with established rules and principles —called also procedural due process. It could also mean judicial requirement that enacted laws may not contain provisions that result in the unfair, arbitrary, or unreasonable treatment of an individual —called also substantive due process.1
This is however all politics, so let’s bring this back home, how does the power hungry politician’s due process or its apparent lack of thereafter affect companies particularly or the IT sector we play in? The answer may not be as far-fetched as you may think.
Consider an engineer trying to configure a switch or router without a network diagram or a basic understanding of what is to be achieved with the configuration, or a company completing a project without discussing cost with the customer. All these may seem silly and highly improbable, but processes help us sequence work activities in an organized manner to achieve a desired end result. Bringing ‘due-process’ into an organization ensure that the cart is not put ahead of the horse. Errors and oversights from employees and management that could cause the organization a lot of money and affect its reputation and brand is minimized and corrected timely.
Clearly defined processes helps identify gaps and bottlenecks, details the identified problem and makes review simpler and easier. It also helps with continuous improvement, knowledge sharing, version control, and even staff onboarding amongst others.
In the highly charged and competitive sector like the service and network solutions provider space we play, do you think that processes are an unnecessary red tape, and needless bureaucracy that slows down the system? Or are they value-adding structures that can improve the system and actually make work faster? We would love to hear from you! Please leave your comments below.
Author: Morenike Ayeni
Sources:
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/due%20process
https://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/what-network-administrators-do.html
Quality Process Management by Gabriel A. Pall, 1987
