Standard operating procedures
In a local biz group, we’ve been talking about SOPs. You know, those interminable step by step delineations of exactly how anything and everything that has the slightest thing to do with your company and its operations, all pinned down in careful black on white for posterity and whatever emergencies/exigencies might, may, or could possibly happen.
SOPs. Standard operating procedures. Are yours properly spelled out? Or are you like me, procrastinating on this one little necessary business duty?
Ostensibly, we create SOPs so that knowledge about how to complete any task for the business can be quickly and uniformly shared with new employees. It’s the franchise premise: create a detailed-enough manual, and your biz can clone itself. If you’re Michael E. Gerber, author of The E-Myth, the standardizing of your processes and systems is the pivotal key to business success.
Now, I am a planner through and through. I believe and live by planning, for all endeavors. I like the process of planning, and I like using a plan as I proceed.
But creating SOPs is another matter entirely.
Writing plans is creating the future; writing SOPs is tabulating the present.
Writing out your standard procedures is bean-counter activity. It’s taking inventory, listing all that exists. And to me it is terrifyingly dull.
(Is that why a great deal does not get done in life – because the dullness of the task actually terrifies us? I’m not afraid of hard work, but tedium is horrifying and to be avoided at all costs. )
But I know that writing out my SOPs is, indeed, key to my business success, and I know I must accomplish this monumental task, and the reason I know that has nothing to do with franchising or sharing with employees, since I’m a solopreneur.
I know that writing out your business SOP is the same as learning about something by drawing it.
When you draw an object, you come to know it in a detailed and intimate way. You realize things about it that you didn’t realize previously.
It’s the same with writing out your operating procedures: you come to know your biz in new and profound ways.
So I’m going to get down to it, one of these days. Soon. I promise.
In the meantime, if you’ve got any hints to make the job more palatable, please comment.
