Back in the stone age I worked for Ed Zander, who once said, “It shouldn’t take extraordinary people to do ordinary things.”

Ed (who went on to become CEO of Motorola) meant that a department’s regular operations shouldn’t require herculean efforts. Everyday activities like bringing on a new employee, going to a conference, or pushing incremental improvements to your platform should be built into your teams’ normal workflow and habits.

For example, editorial department should be able to easily identify and on-board talented writers, make assignments, edit and distribute content to multiple platforms, reach out to the audience, and get everyone paid on time. Anything less is a failure of process — and management.