Process Not Followed: Retrain vs Enforce vs Revise

Why this matters

You wrote the process. People are not following it. Before you crack down, you have to diagnose why, because the wrong response makes it worse. Punish a tech who skipped a step because the step does not work, and you teach the crew that you do not listen. Rewrite a perfectly good process because one person was careless, and you cave on a standard that mattered. Most "they will not follow the process" problems are actually one of three different problems wearing the same shirt: they cannot, they will not, or the process is wrong. This walks you from the most common cause to the least so you respond to the real one.

Start here: is it most people or one person?

This single question splits the diagnosis fast.

• If most people are skipping the same step, the problem is almost certainly the process or the conditions, not the people. When everyone "fails," the thing they are failing is the suspect. Go to the "revise" branch.
• If one person is the outlier while everyone else complies, the process is probably fine and the issue is specific to them. Go to the "retrain or enforce" branch.

Starting here keeps you from punishing individuals for a broken process, which is the most common and most damaging mistake.

Branch 1: If most people skip it, the process is the suspect

When compliance is low across the board, fix the process before you blame anyone. Check, in order:

• Is it actually possible as written? A step that needs a tool nobody has, time the schedule does not allow, or information not available at that point will be skipped by reasonable people. That is a design flaw.
• Does it make sense to the people doing it? If the crew does not understand why a step matters, they treat it as busywork and drop it under pressure. Sometimes the fix is explaining the why, sometimes it is admitting the step has no good why.
• Is there a better way they already found? Often the crew has worked out a faster, equally good method and the written process is just stale. Listen, and consider that their version is the upgrade.
• Is it too long or too complicated? A process nobody can remember is a process nobody follows. Simplify it down to what actually matters.

The fix here is to revise the process, then re-teach the new version. Forcing compliance with a bad process just buries the problem and breeds resentment.

Branch 2: If one person skips it, separate cannot from will not

When everyone else complies and one person does not, find out which of two very different things is going on.

If they did not know or could not:

• They never learned it, learned it wrong, or it changed and nobody told them. This is a training gap, and the response is to retrain, calmly and without blame. Confirm they can now do it.
• They lacked the skill, tool, or time on that job specifically. Fix the gap, do not discipline a person for a shortfall that was not theirs.

If they knew, could, and chose not to:

• Now it is a genuine accountability issue, and only now does enforcement belong. Address it directly and privately: name the behavior, restate the expectation, and be clear about what has to change.
• Do this one-on-one, never in front of the crew. Public correction teaches everyone to hide mistakes.

The danger is jumping straight to enforcement on what was really a "could not." That destroys trust and fixes nothing, because the gap is still there.

How to tell cannot from will not

The honest test is to ask, plainly and without a trap: "Walk me through how you handled it." Their answer usually reveals the cause.

• They describe doing it differently because the standard way did not work here: that is a process or conditions signal. Maybe they are right.
• They describe not knowing the step or fumbling it: training gap, retrain.
• They knew the step, had no real obstacle, and skipped it for convenience: accountability, enforce.

Diagnose before you decide. The same skipped step can be all three causes in three different people.

The decision at a glance

After you respond: confirm it took

Whatever the cause, close the loop. If you revised the process, check that compliance came up across the crew. If you retrained, confirm the person can now do it. If you enforced, watch whether the behavior actually changed. A response you never verify is a guess. And if the same problem keeps recurring after a fix, your diagnosis was wrong, so go back to the top and run it again.

References

• See related: After-Action Review: Learning From a Bad Job
• See related: Write a Checklist That Actually Gets Used
• Trade-standard practice for process management and accountability