Sometimes a problem seems so big and overwhelming because Process is so complex – but it doesn’t have to be that way.

Effective managers know that managing the Process aspect of People-Process-Perception is critical to keeping People and Perception in balance.

A Naturally Chaotic Situation

When my sister began caring for my elderly mother, there were a lot of moving parts. Multiple caregivers coming in and out, dog walkers and doctors appointments to be juggled. My sister and her husband were both stepping in to do things mom had done before: grocery shopping, home repairs, veterinary care. Since mom hadn’t planned to need help – they never do! – her accounts and processes had to be learned on the fly.¹

Things quickly became chaotic. Grocery staples ran out, my sister and her husband both ordered – from different places – repairs for the same appliance, doctor’s appointments got missed, and hand-off between caregivers was inconsistent which meant that sometimes Mom missed her meds or got dinner twice. Mom was too out of it, focused on healing, to be of much help. My sister and her husband began to snap at each other.

My sister, who is a competent, organized, professional woman that colleagues rely on to keep order, called me in tears. “Why is this so hard?”

At the time, I was working as a consultant and could work from anywhere; so I jumped on a plane and went out to care for Mom and see how I could help.

Assessing the Situation

The first thing I did (after giving my sister the week off from caregiving duties) was try to figure out what the big problems were. After listening to my sister, her husband, their teenaged kids, the caregivers, and Mom, I recognized that most of the problems resulted from poor communication.

• All communication was word of mouth, usually one to one.
• Mom had trouble communicating with the caregivers about her preferences.
• The doctors often called Mom’s cell phone directly about appointments. The call would wake Mom up, she’d half-asleep agree to something, go back to sleep, and forget that the call had happened until 15 minutes before the time, when my sister was already at work.

Now, if my sister had not been so close to the problem, she could have figured this out on her own. (Sometimes you need an objective observer to help you see the situation without emotion.) I thought about what I had done at work, when addressing communications issues, to improve processes and came up with a few solutions.

Simple Solutions

Here are some very simple solutions that we put in place:

• I bought a spiral notebook and asked every caregiver to make notes on what happened during every shift: necessary home repairs, mom’s moods and eating habits, groceries that were running low. This was based on the manager’s journal that I used in my first management job.
• That allowed my sister and her family to check the notebook, initial that they had read it, and update their grocery lists or note that they had called for a repair or were buying something (so someone else didn’t duplicate it).
• I also asked the caregivers to note any calls that they heard Mom take about appointments. Even if they didn’t hear the details of date changes, they could note that a doctor had called so my sister could ask mom about it or call the doctor’s office to get the details.
• Mom and I made a list of her favorite foods, and my sister made sure the ingredients were always in-stock. That way, when the caregivers asked what she wanted for lunch, mom could just pick from her menu.
• My sister and I drafted and printed a cleaning schedule – things that needed to be done daily, weekly, monthly, and added it to the log so it could be updated by the caregivers and the family.

This last one was critical to mom’s care because her mind would often go blank when a caregiver asked what she wanted, so she’d answer “whatever” and end up with something involving kale, which she didn’t like and wouldn’t eat, and she was rapidly losing weight. The menu simplified the decision process and ensured that whatever Mom chose was something she enjoyed eating.

Not Rocket Science

None of these interventions involved rocket science – they were simple, small changes. Sometimes that’s all it takes.

In fact, it’s probably better if you keep your changes simple at first. We could have introduced an app that coordinated all these different aspects – but then everyone would have had to learn the app and there would have been compatibility problems, and my sister would have been managing passwords for everyone. ²

But that spiral notebook stayed in use until Mom died, replaced again and again as it ran out of pages. It went to the doctor’s appointments, so my sister could confirm what mom was and wasn’t eating, how much she was sleeping, and any behavioral changes. When hospice workers began visiting, we added them to the notebook.

A $2.59 spiral notebook from the grocery store with a $0.29 pen became the one stable thing that enabled my sister to manage the chaos.

Your Turn

Sometimes it’s helpful to look at a problem through a different lens. Looking at the Process that my sister was using to manage communications at Mom’s home, and thinking about how I had simplified communications at work, informed the solutions that we put into place.

And improving the Process made it easier for the People involved to manage the chaos and improve Mom’s Perception of the situation. Mom went from worrying about my sister’s capability, to trusting her, which allowed Mom to focus on healing.

I’d love to learn about simple interventions you’ve put into place that improved Processes for your team (or your mom). Share in the Comments!

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1. All this during Covid in a red county where caregivers refused to wear masks around Mom, despite the fact that Mom had a lung condition that the virus would run through like fire through paper. ↩︎
2. At one point, someone gave me an Alexa and, since I would never use it, I gave it to Mom, thinking maybe it would help her. But Mom’s illness affected her lungs and the device could never hear her, and it sat collecting dust until my sister finally just tossed it in the trash. ↩︎