PROCESS

Here is How to Build

Design

Principles

What you already do

Did you know you run little processes every day?

Think about this morning. You woke up, and before you had done anything you would call work, you had already run through a handful of small routines without thinking about any of them. Maybe you made a hot drink. You took a cup, you added what you always add, you waited, you carried it to wherever you sit. You did not decide each move that morning. You did it the way you do it every morning, in roughly the same order, and you got roughly the same result.

That is a process. You were not thinking of it as one. It was just how you make your drink. But you have been running it for years, the same way, and it gives you the same result each time. That is what a process is, at its simplest. A way of doing something that you repeat, that gives you the result you want.

Your day is full of these. The way you get ready to leave the house. The way you check your messages. The way you start your work, the way you close it down at the end. Each of these is a small process, repeated, mostly unnoticed. You did not sit down and design them. They became the way you do things, by doing them again and again until they settled into a shape.

This is true of everyone, and it is true of every business. The invoice that goes out, the order that ships, the new person who gets trained, the month that gets closed. Each one is a process, a repeated way of getting a particular result. The people doing them may never have called them processes. They just know how it goes.

So the answer to the question is already in your own morning. You run little processes every day. You always have. The rest of this book is about seeing them clearly, understanding what they are made of, and learning to shape them on purpose instead of leaving them to form on their own. Before any of that, we need to look at what a process is actually made of, starting with its smallest part.

The highest possible standard is to see the small repeated routines in your own day as the processes they are, before you try to change a single one.

Key Takeaway: You already run small processes every day, repeated ways of getting a result that you have never had to call processes. They are in your morning routine and in every business around you. Seeing that they exist, in your own life, is where everything in this book begins.

You have been running processes your whole life. You just never had to name them.

MarvinPro · PROCESS · Here is How to Build · Design · Principles · Discipline 1: Did You Know? · Section: What you already do

MarvinPro | June 2026

marvinpro.com

The step

Take the smallest piece first. A process is made of steps, and a step is one action that moves the work forward.

Filling a cup is a step. Adding the milk is a step. Waiting for it to be ready is a step. Each one is a single action, and on its own it is small. Filling a cup achieves nothing by itself. You cannot drink an empty warm cup. The step matters only because it is part of something larger, and because the next step needs it to have happened.

This is the smallest part of any process, and it is the part most people have never named. We tend to see the whole thing, making the drink, sending the invoice, and not the separate actions inside it. But the whole is always made of steps, and you cannot understand or improve a process until you can see the steps it is made of. A process you cannot break into steps is a process you cannot work with. It is just a thing that happens.

A step is also the smallest part of the result. Each step produces something. That is what makes it a step and not just a movement. Filling the cup produces a full cup. Warming the milk produces warm milk. The step does something, and what it does is the beginning of the outcome you are working toward. Break the work into steps, and you have broken the result into its smallest parts.

The highest possible standard is to break any process you run into its separate steps, and to see each step as one action that produces one thing.

Key Takeaway: A step is one action that moves the work forward, and it is the smallest part of a process. Each step produces something. You cannot understand or improve a process until you can see the separate steps it is made of.

The whole is always made of steps. See the steps, and you can see the process.

MarvinPro · PROCESS · Here is How to Build · Design · Principles · Discipline 1: Did You Know? · Section: The step

MarvinPro | June 2026

marvinpro.com

What goes in and what comes out

Each step takes something in and hands something on. What it takes in is its input. What it hands on is its output.

Warming the milk takes in cold milk and hands on warm milk. The cold milk is the input. The warm milk is the output. This sounds almost too simple to say, but it is the idea that makes a process work, because of what happens next. The warm milk that came out of the warming step is exactly what the next step needs. The output of one step becomes the input of the next.

That is the most important thing to understand in this chapter. A process is not a list of separate actions that happen to sit near each other. It is a chain. Each step produces something, and that something is what the next step works on. The output of one step is the input of the next, all the way through, until the final output is the result you wanted.

Once you see this, you can see why a process holds together or falls apart. If a step does not produce what the next step needs, the chain breaks at that point, and everything after it stops or goes wrong. If the milk is not warmed, the next step receives cold milk, and the result is not the drink you wanted. The steps are joined by what passes between them, and that joining is the difference between a working process and a pile of actions.

The highest possible standard is to see, for every step, what it takes in and what it hands on, and to see how the output of one step becomes the input of the next.

Key Takeaway: Every step takes something in, its input, and hands something on, its output. The output of one step becomes the input of the next. This is what joins steps into a working chain, and it is where a process holds together or breaks.

The output of one step is the input of the next. That is what turns separate actions into a process.

MarvinPro · PROCESS · Here is How to Build · Design · Principles · Discipline 1: Did You Know? · Section: What goes in and what comes out

MarvinPro | June 2026

marvinpro.com

The order

If the output of one step feeds the next, then the order of the steps cannot be random. It has to follow the chain.

You warm the milk before you pour the coffee onto it, not after. You cannot warm the milk once it is already mixed into the finished drink. Some steps must come before others, because the later step needs what the earlier step produced. The order is not a matter of tidiness. It is built into how the steps feed each other.

This is what a sequence is. Steps in the order that the work requires. Change the order, and you may get a worse result, or no result at all. Pour before you have a cup ready, and the work fails at that point. The sequence is part of the process, as much as the steps themselves. A process is not just which steps you do. It is which steps you do, in which order.

Some steps do not depend on each other, and those can happen at the same time. While the milk is warming, you can be getting the machine ready, because neither of those steps needs the other to have finished first. Seeing which steps must follow others, and which can run alongside, is the beginning of understanding how a process really moves. For now, the point is simpler. Steps run in an order, and the order matters, because each step is feeding the next.

The highest possible standard is to see the order your steps run in, and to understand why each step sits where it does, before you ever change that order.

Key Takeaway: A sequence is steps in the order the work requires. The order is not about tidiness. It is built into how each step feeds the next, so changing it can give a worse result or no result at all. A process is which steps you do, in which order.

A process is not just which steps you do. It is which steps you do, in which order.

MarvinPro · PROCESS · Here is How to Build · Design · Principles · Discipline 1: Did You Know? · Section: The order

MarvinPro | June 2026

marvinpro.com

Putting it together

Now the word can be defined, because every part of it has been built.

A process is a sequence of steps, joined by their inputs and outputs, that turns a starting input into a final result, reliably, again and again.

Read that slowly, because every piece of it is something you now have. Steps, the single actions. Inputs and outputs, what each step takes in and hands on. Sequence, the order the steps run in. And reliably, again and again, which is the part that makes it a process and not a one-time effort. Making a drink once, in a way you could never repeat, is not a process. Making it the same way every morning, and getting the same result, is.

That last part matters more than it seems. A process is defined by repetition and reliability. The value of a process is that it gives you the same result each time, without you having to work it out again from the beginning. You do not reinvent your morning drink every day. You run the process, and the result comes out the same. That sameness is not boring. It is the whole point. It means the result is dependable, and your attention is freed for everything else.

This is what you have been doing your whole life without naming it. Every repeated, reliable way you get a result is a process, made of steps, joined by inputs and outputs, run in a sequence. You did not need this book to start doing them. You needed it to start seeing them, which you now can.

The highest possible standard is to define any process you run in these terms: the steps, the inputs and outputs, the sequence, and the reliable result it produces.

Key Takeaway: A process is a sequence of steps, joined by their inputs and outputs, that turns a starting input into a final result, reliably and repeatably. The reliability is the point. A process gives you the same result each time, so you do not have to work it out again from the beginning.

A process is a repeatable way of getting the same result, so you never have to work it out from the beginning again.

MarvinPro · PROCESS · Here is How to Build · Design · Principles · Discipline 1: Did You Know? · Section: Putting it together

MarvinPro | June 2026

marvinpro.com

A real example

A leader makes a morning coffee, the same way almost every day.

It begins with the cup. There is a favourite kind, and there are four of them in the cupboard, so that even on a morning when the others are unwashed, a clean one is almost always there. This is a small thing, but it is not an accident. Four cups means the process can run even when yesterday has not been tidied up.

Half a cup of half-fat milk goes in first, because the leader likes the drink milky. Still half asleep, the leader puts the cup of milk in the microwave for one minute. While the milk is warming, and this is the part worth noticing, the leader is not waiting. Water goes into the coffee machine during that minute, because filling the machine does not need the milk, and the milk does not need the machine. Two steps, running at the same time, because neither depends on the other.

When the milk is warm, the cup is placed where it will receive the coffee. The capsule goes in. The machine is started, set to the large cup. When it finishes, the spent capsule is dropped out, a little coconut milk is added, and a small sprinkle of five spices goes on top. Those last two steps are not there by chance either. They are what makes this drink this leader's drink, and not just any coffee. A choice, repeated every morning, that shapes the result.

Then the leader carries it back to bed and drinks it slowly, over about twenty minutes, before getting up to start the day. To be fair, most mornings it is not the leader who makes it at all. Another person in the house makes it, and it comes out the same, because the steps are clear enough that someone other than the one who shaped the process can run it and produce the same result.

Notice what just happened in that cup. Steps, each one a single action. Inputs and outputs, the cold milk becoming warm milk, the warm milk receiving the coffee. A sequence, the milk warmed before the coffee is brewed onto it, never after. Two steps running at the same time because neither needed the other. A reliable result, the same drink, morning after morning, even in another person's hands. Every part of this chapter is in that coffee. The leader never called it a process. It was one all along.

The coffee process ends when the coffee is made. The waking process does not.

MarvinPro · PROCESS · Here is How to Build · Design · Principles · Discipline 1: Did You Know? · A Real Example

MarvinPro | June 2026

marvinpro.com

Did You Know?

Did you know you run little processes every day? You do, and now you can see them. They are in your morning routine, in the way you start and close your work, in every repeated thing you do to get a result. You have been running them your whole life without naming them. Seeing that they exist, in your own life, is where this book begins.

Each of those processes is made of steps. A step is one action that moves the work forward, and it is the smallest part of a process. Each step produces something, which makes it the smallest part of the result as well.

Each step takes something in and hands something on. Its input, and its output. The output of one step becomes the input of the next, and that is what joins separate actions into a working chain. It is where a process holds together, and where it breaks.

Because each step feeds the next, the steps run in an order. That order is a sequence, and it is not about tidiness. It is built into how the steps feed each other, so changing it can give a worse result or none at all. A process is which steps you do, in which order.

Put together, a process is a sequence of steps, joined by their inputs and outputs, that turns a starting input into a final result, reliably and repeatably. The reliability is the point. A process gives you the same result each time, so you never have to work it out from the beginning again.

That is the whole of this chapter, and it is the ground everything else stands on. You now have the parts every process is made of, and you can see those parts in your own day. What you do not yet have is what to do with them. A process can simply happen, the way your morning drink happened, or it can be shaped on purpose. Shaping it on purpose is a craft, and that craft has five parts. You see the process. You design it. You sign it off with the people it touches. You run it. You support it as it lives. See, Design, Sign, Run, Support. Those five are the disciplines of working with processes on purpose, and each one is a chapter of its own, beginning with the first. Before you can design a process, you have to be able to see it. That is where we go next.

You already run processes. The work ahead is not to start, but to see them, and then to shape them on purpose.

MarvinPro · PROCESS · Here is How to Build · Design · Principles · Discipline 1: Did You Know? · Chapter Outcome

MarvinPro | June 2026

marvinpro.com

Think Simple.