Everything in life has a process. But when some decide a process can’t be trusted, we no longer have a process.
Everything has a process. Life itself has a process. Your day has a process. You wake up, usually with an alarm. Then you get out of bed, wash up, eat, hydrate, maybe caffeinate, then go.
Process is simply how we do things.
Sometimes the process trips us up. Or it is the thing we fight about. Maybe we don’t like a rule because it seems antiquated or we dislike one of the hoops we have to jump through.
Other times, process gets manipulated to achieve unacceptable outcomes. The filibuster is the most famous example of a non-rule deployed with the sole purpose of betraying the rules of the Senate. It has become part of the process as a pseudo-rule. Rules have been written to outline its use as the anti-rule rule.
The purpose of process is to bring order. This is obvious.
And process is famously neutral. So it generally requires little personal insight. The process is the process with or without us.
But processes are never fool-proof.
Fools and scoundrels alike use our trust in the process to do what they want.
And when that happens, the process stops doing the thing it was created to do: bringing genuine order.
A process of assessment only works when both parties agree that the assessment has value. When we can impeach an assessor, there is no process because, in these cases, the process is not something fundamental and innate. It is something agreed to.
When a process requires other people and those other people don’t join the process, you don’t have a process.
What you now have is the opportunity to create your process for determining what a worthy successor to our process might look like and what you are willing to do about it.
When only one “side” trusts the process, you don’t have one. And I suspect that those who don’t trust have a clearer understanding of that.